Tracking abortion laws across the United States

Abortion is now banned in 14 states, while four have banned the procedure past roughly six weeks of pregnancy

Carter Sherman and Andrew Witherspoon, with additional reporting by Jessica Glenza and Poppy Noor
Mon 29 Jul 2024

The US supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade may have abolished the national right to abortion, but the state-by-state battle for abortion rights is far from over.

Since Roe was overturned in 2022, 14 states have enacted near-total abortion bans, while four states – Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and Iowa – have banned abortion past roughly six weeks of pregnancy. Other states have enacted laws or held ballot referendums to protect abortion rights.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/jul/29/abortion-laws-bans-by-state

29.07.2024

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Abortion rights supporters and opponents mark one year without Roe v. Wade

By Julia Harte, Reuters
June 19, 2023

Abortion rights advocates and opponents are set to mark this week's one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized the procedure nationwide with events to rally voters and highlight the ongoing fights over access.

The ruling, whose anniversary comes this Saturday, had a swift impact by freeing states to ban abortion. Republican-controlled legislatures in numerous states passed restrictive legislation, with near-total abortion bans now in place in 14 states even as opinion polls show that a majority of Americans want abortion legal in all or most cases.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/abortion-rights-supporters-opponents-mark-one-year-without-roe-v-wade-2023-06-19/

19.06.2023

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Kamala Harris

Naral Pro-Choice America

overturning Roe v. Wade

Rachel Carmona

Roe v. Wade

Ryan Stitzlein

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America

Oklahoma’s New Abortion Ban Leaves Clinics Reeling

Near-total ban on abortions took immediate effect in the state, forcing abortion clinics to halt procedures

By Jennifer Calfas
May 27, 2022

Oklahoma abortion clinics suspended appointments and are now referring patients to nearby states after new legislation quickly outlawed most abortions there.

Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, signed a ban on abortion at any stage of pregnancy into law Wednesday. It took effect immediately and is now the strictest antiabortion law in any U.S. state. The law also deputizes enforcement to private citizens, a strategy first used by Texas lawmakers that has made it more difficult for abortion-rights groups to challenge the regulations in court.

Continued: https://www.wsj.com/articles/oklahomas-new-abortion-ban-leaves-clinics-reeling-11653610467

Support for abortion rights hits new high as midterm outlook is grim for Democrats

63% oppose overturning Roe v. Wade and Democratic enthusiasm ticks up in a new NBC News poll, but Biden's job approval rating falls to 39% amid economic worries.

May 15, 2022
By Mark Murray

WASHINGTON — Support for abortion rights has reached a record high, and nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, according to a new national NBC News poll conducted after the leak of a draft opinion that would strike down the constitutional right to abortion.

What’s more, the survey finds abortion climbing up the list of issues that Americans believe are the most important, and that Democratic interest in the upcoming midterms has increased since earlier this year.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/support-abortion-rights-hits-new-high-midterm-outlook-stays-mostly-unc-rcna28869

The US Supreme Court is wrong to disregard evidence on the harm of banning abortion

Fifty years of research shows that abortion access is crucial for health care and important for equality.

Nature, Editorial
05 May 2022

Abortion could soon cease to be legal across
the United States, according to a leaked draft of a US Supreme Court opinion,
published by news outlet Politico on 2 May. The court’s chief justice, John
Roberts, confirmed that the 98-page document is authentic, but not necessarily
final. If the draft does represent the court’s final position, it will fly in
the face of an overwhelming body of evidence from economists and reproductive-
and public-health researchers who point to the dire, immediate and unequal
impact this ruling will have on hundreds of thousands of people.

Continued: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01249-2

05.05.2022

Center for Reproductive Rights

Julie Rikelman

overturning Roe v. Wade

The supreme court’s coming abortion ruling may spark a new era of US unrest

There’s a strong risk that the case will spark anger and violence – whether the court overturns Roe v Wade or not

Stephen Marche, The Guardian
Wed 27 Apr 2022

Civil wars don’t always begin with gunfire. Sometimes civil wars begin with learned arguments. In April 1861, Confederate forces shot on Fort Sumter, but at the time even Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, had doubts about whether the event mattered all that much. It was, he claimed, “either the beginning of a fearful war, or the end of a political contest”; he could not say which. During the decades that preceded the assault on Fort Sumter, complex legal and political fissures had been working their way through the United States, slowly rendering the country ungovernable and opening the path to mass violence.

The US is the middle of another such legal crackup, this time over the question of abortion. The courts today face the crisis American courts faced in the 1850s: is there any way to make laws for a country with furious and widening differences in fundamental values?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/27/supreme-court-abortion-new-era-unrest

27.04.2022

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Opinion

civil unrest over abortion

interstate conflict over abortion

Lizelle Herrera

overturning Roe v. Wade

Can red states regulate abortions performed outside their borders? A post-Roe landscape would test just that

By Tierney Sneed, CNN
Sat April 23, 2022

(CNN) If the Supreme Court reverses its long-standing abortion precedent later this year and lets states ban abortions within their borders, it will unleash a new legal and legislative fight over how far anti-abortion lawmakers can reach to target conduct that happens outside their state lines.

At a December hearing on the blockbuster abortion case now before the Supreme Court, the conservative justices who appeared inclined to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision framed a post-Roe landscape as one where states can choose the contours of their abortion policies for themselves.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/23/politics/abortion-out-of-state-legislation/index.html

If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned, What’s Next?

After building toward such a moment for half a century, pro-life legal efforts aren’t likely to stop there.

By Jeannie Suk Gersen, The New Yorker
April 17, 2022

In 2003, when the Supreme Court held, in Lawrence v. Texas, that criminalizing gay sex was unconstitutional, it insisted that the decision had nothing to do with marriage equality. In a scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Do not believe it.” Then, in 2013, when the Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, emphasizing the tradition of letting the states define marriage, Scalia issued another warning, saying that “no one should be fooled” into thinking that the Court would leave states free to exclude gay couples from that definition. He was finally proved right two years later, when the reasoning on dignity and equality developed in those earlier rulings led to the Court’s holding that the Constitution requires all states to recognize same-sex marriage.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/if-roe-v-wade-is-overturned-whats-next

Now nothing will stop the Supreme Court from overturning Roe v. Wade

By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
April 13, 2022

When the history of how American women lost their reproductive rights is written, the bill-signing that took place in Oklahoma City on Tuesday should be acknowledged as a key moment when the shrinking window of possibility that the Supreme Court might hold back from overturning Roe v. Wade essentially closed forever.

The occasion was Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signing a bill outlawing almost all abortions in the state, a move that is as plainly unconstitutional as it would be for the state to make it illegal to practice Judaism or criticize the president.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/13/oklahoma-abortion-supreme-court-overturn-roe/

The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Post-Roe Agenda: Inconvenient, Illegal, Unthinkable

In the event that Roe v. Wade falls, anti-abortion advocates will almost certainly look to create broad regions of the U.S. where abortion is prohibited – and to limit its practice in places where it isn’t.

By Kaia Hubbard
April 8, 2022

Supporters of abortion access feared the worst when Texas lawmakers shocked the country with a law banning abortion beyond six weeks of pregnancy, standing in direct opposition to the precedent established in the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling. And the reduction in abortions in the first few months after SB 8 was palpable.

Since then, the situation in Texas has been heralded as a harbinger of what a post-Roe reality may bring nationwide. But more than six months after the law took effect that not only prohibits abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected but deputizes private citizens as its enforcer, studies have pointed to a much smaller reduction in abortions than expected among the state’s residents due to alternate routes of accessing the services. Texans are still getting abortions – by going out of state or by ordering pills online.

Continued: https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2022-04-08/the-anti-abortion-movements-post-roe-agenda-inconvenient-illegal-unthinkable