roe v wade argumentative essay

Roe V. Wade Argumentative Essay

With almost half the nation divided among their views, abortion remains one of the most controversial topics in our society. Since Roe v. Wade, our views in society as well as following court cases have been progressing toward the woman’s right to choose. The precedent set by Roe v. Wade made the Supreme Court acknowledge that it cannot rule specifically when life begins and it also affirms that it is the woman’s right to have an abortion under the 14th Amendment. In the 1st Amendment, the Establishment Clause forbids the government from passing laws “which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another”. Many Christian pro-lifers use their religious beliefs to dispute when life begins. Although through the Free Exercise …show more content…

Before Roe v. wade the number of deaths from illegal abortions was around 5000 and in the 50s and 60s the number of illegal abortions ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. These illegal abortions pose major health risks to the life of the woman including damage to the bladder, intestines as well as rupturing of the uterus. The choice to become a mother must be given to the woman most importantly because it’s her body, her health, and she will be taking on a great responsibility. A woman’s choice to choose abortion should not be restricted by anyone; there are multiple reasons why abortion will be the more sensible decision for the female. Women who are victims of rape will always be in remembrance of their terrifying experience, which sometimes result in neglect and unfair treatment of the child due to the woman’s rape trauma syndrome. Women who are not financially stable that are pregnant and oppose abortion live in poverty. If abortions were banned it would increase illegal abortions which have critical effect to the woman’s health. Statistics estimate that the risk of death from an abortion is 0.6 in 100,000. The risk of death childbirth is 14 times higher, 8.8 in 100,000. If anti- abortion laws are implemented, it may increase at home abortions which

Roe V. Wade Abortion Analysis

Since Roe v. Wade overturned most of the state and federal laws restricting abortion in the U.S., the number of abortions, according to the CDC, in 2013, there were 664,435 legal induced abortions reported the CDC from forty nine reporting areas. If one person considers a human life to begin at conception, this just means that over 6000 cases of legal manslaughter each year. As a result of legalizing abortion, a Pro-life movement has

Women Empowerment: The Roe V. Wade Case

More than 18% of woman died from self assisted abortions (Rachael Benson Gold, Guttmacher Institute). “In New York City 77% of women who has attempted abortion was self induced” (Rachael Benson Gold, Guttmacher Institute) Making Abortions legal made it safer and the number of deaths had declined significantly in years because of the tools used were clean causing less infection and women had more professional help. Although the legalization of abortions have saved the lives of many American women, some people think abortion is still wrong because they believe life begins when the baby is

Roe V. Wade's Decision To Legalize Abortion

Abortion serves as an alternative to those who face the highest costs of bearing and raising children like young women who have not finished school yet, couples who face the expectation of a child that will have severe physical complications, contraceptive failure, and those who are poor or are not able to afford children, especially, in the event that these children will be raised by a single parent. Abortion as a legal business emerged following the Supreme Court’s, Roe v. Wade, decision to constitutionalize abortion in 1973. Since the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade, the market for abortion has become an important part of America’s economy. For years following those decisions, abortion opponents have attacked patients, passing laws that restrict abortion access. Some of those laws include: requiring parental involvement in a minor’s decision to have an

Roe V. Wade Essay

The Right to Abortion On January 22, 1973, in a 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down it’s landmark decision in the case of Roe v. Wade, which recognized that the constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman’s right to make her own personal medical decisions — including the decision to have an abortion without interference from politicians (Planned Parenthood). There are many moments in history when Roe v. Wade has been so close to being overturned, yet it is still in place. Abortion should stay legal, or not overturned, for the health of women everywhere. First, this important case took place at the time of abortion being illegal in most states, including Texas, where Roe v. Wade began.

Roe Vs. Wade: The Legalization Of Abortion

In 1973, abortion became legal in the United States through the well-known court case of Roe vs Wade. Jane Roe was a pregnant and single woman who filed a lawsuit against a Dallas Country District Attorney, Henry Wade, in a federal court in Texas. She argued that she had a right to terminate her pregnancy in a safe medical environment even if her life was not in danger. The court ruled in her favor, saying that the constitution protects an individual’s “zone of privacy”, and that the zone was wide enough to include a woman 's choice whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. Since 1973, millions of abortions have been performed, yet the controversy over whether it should have been legalized is still argued by countless individuals today.

Women's Reproductive Rights

Women’s rights have been a long struggle in America’s legal system, as well as in the religious world, for many decades and women continue to have challenges, concerns, and struggles today. Fighting for what is best for their bodies such as a woman’s right to contraceptives to control whether she will get pregnant or not was not ideal for religious and personal reasons but would find a worthy advocate in a woman who would dedicate her life for women’s reproductive rights. The right for a woman to have an abortion became a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Courts in a very well-known case. It has always been a double standard in what was right and wrong, moral or immoral, towards women than men. A man was looked at with respect

The Benefits Of Roe V. Wade

A women’s right to personally decide what she wants done to her body in any medical situation has been something they have fought for many years. On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court set a precedent that gave women that right. Along with this right to decide came the legalization of medical abortions. This is a subject that affects all American citizens nowadays, both men and women, because of the recent protests such as the Women’s March on Washington. As citizens of the United States, men and women alike, we know the historical past of what women have fought for and what rights they have been given due to that fight.

Argumentative Analysis Of Abortion Essay

Her well-developed and valid premise holds value and presents a strongly reasoned argument, backed by extensive research she conducted. Premises and Rationales Tanya Luhrmann upholds her evidence behind every premise regarding abortions, the unfair treatment of the fetus, and “Pro-Life” beliefs. She explains that, “...the issue that provokes such anger surrounds the fetus’s right to life--its status as a potential human being” (Luhrmann, 1979, p. 1). Luhrmann addresses the importance of legalizing and creating safe procedures during abortions

Pro Life Abortion

Introduction After decades, the abortion debate remains a controversial issue, continuing to divide the American populace, while eroding the moral fabric of the country. Contention over national abortion policy continually unfurls in media headlines, and is rapidly becoming a central issue in the political arena. Tragically, pertinent discussion typically disintegrates, with proponents on both sides feeling deeply offended by the discourse. In order to make progress on this issue, it may be helpful to understand the commonalities between advocates on both sides.

Unit 7 P4 Essay

Rape happens (pause), health issues occur (pause), and so do teen pregnancies(pause). Our bodies, our lives, our right to decide. Worldwide, 47,000 women die a year from unsafe abortions (pause). Anything from a simple herbal tea to a prescribed drug and occasionally even going to Mexico to have it done illegally.

Persuasive Essay On Unsafe Abortion

Worldwide, 42 million abortions occur every year, 20 million of which happen on unsafe terms (Haddad and Nour 122). As of late, abortion incidence has begun to decrease due to the creation and distribution of contraceptive medications, as this resulted in fewer unintended pregnancies. However, the overall number of unsafe abortions has remained the same, making the proportion of unsafe to safe terminations greater as time goes on (Sedgh et al. 629). This trend is especially evident in the United States, and does not appear to be ending soon; the epidemic of unsafe abortion in America will only continue to increase under current conditions. In this essay, I will use research conducted on the United States’ legislations to examine how the lack

Abortion: A Huge Argument In The World Today

Abortion is a huge argument in the world today. “In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court held in Roe V.Wade that the right of privacy protects women’s decisions to end unwanted pregnancy before the fetus develops.” By 2013, 70 restrictions to curb the practice of abortion from 22 states. (Funk & Wagnalls pg.1). In 2014, five health votes were examined by the House of Representatives regarding the matter of abortion.

Argumentative Essay Abortion

The conflict over abortion in America has been a major social problem in our nation for decades. During the 1960 's and 70 's with the coinciding civil rights movement and women’s rights movement, abortion became the new national issue that we still see today between two opposing ideologies, grouped into sides coined as pro-life and pro-choice. It is one of the biggest debates over whose morals and beliefs are adequate for our society that make the abortion issue such a controversial and divisive one. Each side believes that their views and beliefs are what we are a society should follow and belief.

A Defense Of Abortion By Judith Jarvis Thomason

Abortion is one of the most controversial topics discussed in our world today. Millions of fetuses never got a chance to be born because a mother chose to abort them. Although I do not believe in abortion, I believe a woman should have the right to decide whether to have a baby or not. Our textbook presents views and arguments on the issues. The article from our text on “A Defense of Abortion” written by Judith Jarvis Thomason states the right to have an abortion should be the pregnant woman’s decision.

Argumentative Essay On Abortion

“In the year 2004, there were approximately 1.37 million abortions performed in the United States” (Chew 143). Since 1973 and even before, abortion has raged into a hot-topic issue among the press, politicians, and even doctors; among many other people. This topic has been disputed since even before the late Nineteenth Century. During the 1940s, it even became a social norm to raid the abortionists’ offices. From that time on, the abortion debate has been brought into light many times.

More about Roe V. Wade Argumentative Essay

5 key arguments from the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade

The Supreme Court on Friday issued its final opinion in a case that overturns Roe v. Wade , the ruling that has given women the constitutional right to an abortion for nearly 50 years.

In delivering the opinion of the court’s conservative majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the 1973 Roe decision was “egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided.” His arguments were also made in a draft opinion that was publicly leaked in May, an unprecedented breach that has galvanized abortion rights supporters and their anti-abortion opponents.

Legal experts say the language in the official version does not significantly diverge from Alito’s draft . While the justices voted 6-3 to uphold a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a separate concurring opinion that he does not support the full repeal of abortion rights.

In their dissent, the high court’s three liberal wing justices — Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — took aim at the majority’s “draconian” ruling as a decision that will curtail women’s rights and their “status as free and equal citizens.”

Both sets of justices made compelling arguments that legal experts say will set off fierce constitutional debate. Among those key takeaways are:

Erik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.

Nigel Chiwaya is the Senior Editor, Data Viz for NBC News Digital.

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

A brief lesson on Roe v. Wade

(This is an updated version of a piece published earlier this year before the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade on June 24.)

Roe v. Wade , the historic 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal in the first trimester of a woman’s pregnancy, was struck down by the conservative majority on Friday, taking away for the first time a constitutional right that had been extended to Americans for half a century. States can now decide to ban abortion; 13 states have “trigger bans,” designed to take effect the moment Roe was overturned, and a number of other Republican-led states are expected to move to ban abortion as well.

Supreme Court ruling leaves states free to outlaw abortion

Who was Jane Roe, and how did she transform abortion rights?

The following background on the case comes from the National Constitution Center , a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia with a congressional charter to disseminate information about the U.S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis:

On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that continues to divide the nation. In Roe v. Wade , the court ruled that a state law that banned abortion s except to save the life of the mother was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment . The decision has proved to be one of the most controversial cases in the court’s history.

Norma L. McCorvey discovered that she was pregnant in June 1969. It was to be her third child, but McCorvey wished to have an abortion. At the time, Texas law allowed for abortion only in cases of rape and incest or to save the life of the mother. McCorvey was advised by her friends to falsely assert that she had been raped, but there was no police report to back up this claim. Instead, McCorvey attempted to have an illegal abortion, but she soon discovered that the authorities had shut down the facility.

McCorvey visited a local attorney seeking advice on what to do next. The attorney assisted McCorvey with beginning the process of putting her child up for adoption and referred her to Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, two recent graduates of the University of Texas Law School.

Coffee and Weddington brought a lawsuit on the behalf of McCorvey (who went by “Jane Roe” throughout the case to protect her identity), claiming that the state’s law violated Roe’s constitutional rights. The suit claimed that, while her life was not in danger, Roe had a right to obtain an abortion in a safe, medical environment within her home state. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas agreed and ruled that the law violated Roe’s right to privacy found in the Ninth Amendment , making it unconstitutional.

Texas appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, and the case reached the court in 1970. However, the court decided to wait to hear Roe until it had decided Younger v. Harris and United States v. Vuitch . After the court announced the decision in Vuitch , which upheld the constitutionality of a Washington, D.C., statute that similarly outlawed abortion, the justices voted to hear Roe and the closely related case of Doe v. Bolton .

Arguments in the case began on Dec. 13, 1971. Shortly before that date, Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan II retired from the bench. Chief Justice Warren Burger decided that Roe and Doe , as well as the other cases that were scheduled on the docket, should go on as planned.

Jay Floyd, who was representing Texas in the case, opened his argument with what commentators have described as the “worst joke in legal history.” In reference to Coffee and Weddington, the female attorneys representing McCorvey, Floyd began by saying, “Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court. It’s an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word.”

The rest of the case was argued that day. However, as Justice Harry Blackmun was attempting to draft a preliminary opinion based upon the law’s vagueness in May 1971, he proposed to his colleagues that the case be reargued. After some debate on the issue, the case was reargued on Oct. 11, 1972. Texas Assistant Attorney General Robert C. Flowers replaced Floyd.

Blackmun remained as the justice selected to the court’s opinion following the second argument, and on Jan. 22, 1973, the court issued its 7-to-2 decision. In it, the court determined that Texas had violated Roe’s constitutional right to privacy.

Drawing on the First , Fourth , Ninth, and 14th amendments, the court said the Constitution protects an individual’s “zones of privacy.” Citing cases in which it was ruled that contraception, marriage and child rearing were activities included in these zones, the court found that the zone was “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Because the court determined that abortions were within a woman’s zone of privacy, it was ruling that a woman had a fundamental right to the procedure and that any limitations on abortion must meet the standards of strict scrutiny. This meant that there must have been “compelling state interest” in regulating abortions, and the legislation must have been narrowly tailored to meet this “compelling” state interest.

The court then assessed the state’s interests. Justice Blackmun found two legitimate government interests: protecting the mother’s health and “protecting the potentiality of human life.” To balance the fundamental privacy right to abortion with these two state interests, the court created the trimester framework. This solution determined when the right to abortion would be without limitations and when the state’s interests would be compelling enough to outweigh the woman’s right to choose.

The court said that during the first trimester, the abortion decision was left to the woman and her doctor. Following the first trimester, until fetal viability, the state’s interest in the mother’s health reaches the compelling level, and the state can regulate the procedure, only if it “reasonably relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health.” When the point of fetal viability is reached, then the state could protect its interest in “potential life” and regulate abortion to that end. This includes banning the practice of abortion at that stage in the pregnancy.

In 1992, the court adjusted the trimester framework in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey . In that case, the plurality asserted, under the 14th Amendment, that the mother had a constitutional right to abortion and that this right could not be unduly interfered with by the state prior to viability — what’s known now as the “undue burden” test.

Ever since the Roe v. Wade decision was issued in 1973, the case has remained one of the most contentious in the public sphere. It has inspired political campaigns and movements and sparked debates throughout the nation over ethics, religion, biology and constitutional law.

And this classroom lesson is from C-SPAN — a nonprofit public service television network — with links to related videos:

Description

The Supreme Court has the power to interpret the Constitution. Its rulings on cases determine the meaning of laws and acts of Congress and the president. Knowing the key decisions of the Supreme Court and the precedents they set is vital in understanding the meaning of laws, how our country has changed over time, and the direction the country is headed. In this lesson, students will examine the case of Roe v. Wade .

• STEP 1. As a class, view the following videos and answer the questions below to lay the foundation for students to understand this case:
• VIDEO CLIP: Historical Context (6:08)
• VIDEO CLIP: Background and Legal Process (5:46) Explain the Texas law that was being contested. Describe the circumstances involving Norma McCorvey that led to this case. Explain the legal process that McCorvey took as this case made its way through the state courts. According to Clarke Forsythe, what is the problem associated with the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade ? Explain Henry Wade’s role in the case. Explain the ruling by the three-judge federal panel.
• STEP 2. Students can either work independently or in groups to view the following video clips. They should take notes using the handout below:
• Handout: Supreme Court Case: Roe v. Wade (Google Doc)
• VIDEO CLIP: Questions before the Court and Oral Arguments (3:32) Describe the four questions before the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade . Explain the key points for both sides in the oral arguments before the court. What are the problems with the first oral arguments, according to Clarke Forsythe?
• VIDEO CLIP: The First Conference (4:08) Explain the frustration that developed among the justices during the first conference following the hearing of Roe v. Wade . Why did the case end up being re-argued? Describe the reactions of the justices to its being re-argued.
• VIDEO CLIP: Second Oral Argument (2:57) What are some of the challenges for the attorneys in arguing the case before the court, according to Clarke Forsythe? Describe the arguments for both sides during the rehearing of Roe v. Wade . How did the arguments differ from the first hearing?
• VIDEO CLIP: The Decision (2:36) How did the court answer the four key questions of the case? Explain the majority opinion of Justice Harry Blackmun. Explain the dissenting opinion of Justice Byron White. Describe the events and dynamics of the court during the announcement of the opinion.
• VIDEO CLIP: Impact and Legacy I (0:43)
• VIDEO CLIP: Impact and Legacy II (1:24) Explain the significance and legacy of the Roe v. Wade case to law and society.
• STEP 3. As a class, discuss the significance of this case, the precedent it set, and its legacy.
• STEP 4. Choose an activity from C-SPAN Classroom’s Deliberations site to engage in a structured student-centered analysis of the case.

Additional Resource

• Handout: Supreme Court Case: Roe v. Wade

More to read:

Coming of age during Roe v. Wade: Women tell us how they saw the moment then and now

The original Roe v. Wade decision also was leaked to the press

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Roe v. Wade

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 21, 2023 | Original: March 27, 2018

Roe v. Wade was a landmark legal decision issued on January 22, 1973, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure across the United States. The court held that a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution . Prior to Roe v. Wade , abortion had been illegal throughout much of the country since the late 19th century. Since the 1973 ruling, many states imposed restrictions on abortion rights. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade  on June 24, 2022, holding that there was no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion.

Abortion Before Roe v. Wade

Until the late 19th century, abortion was legal in the United States before “quickening,” the point at which a woman could first feel movements of the fetus, typically around the fourth month of pregnancy.

Some of the early regulations related to abortion were enacted in the 1820s and 1830s and dealt with the sale of dangerous drugs that women used to induce abortions. Despite these regulations and the fact that the drugs sometimes proved fatal to women, they continued to be advertised and sold.

In the late 1850s, the newly established American Medical Association began calling for the criminalization of abortion, partly in an effort to eliminate doctors’ competitors such as midwives and homeopaths.

Additionally, some nativists, alarmed by the country’s growing population of immigrants, were anti-abortion because they feared declining birth rates among white, American-born, Protestant women.

In 1869, the Catholic Church banned abortion at any stage of pregnancy, while in 1873, Congress passed the Comstock law, which made it illegal to distribute contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs through the U.S. mail. By the 1880s, abortion was outlawed across most of the country.

During the 1960s, during the women’s rights movement, court cases involving contraceptives laid the groundwork for Roe v. Wade .

In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law banning the distribution of birth control to married couples, ruling that the law violated their implied right to privacy under the U.S. Constitution . And in 1972, the Supreme Court struck down a law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried adults.

Meanwhile, in 1970, Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortion, although the law only applied to the state’s residents. That same year, New York legalized abortion, with no residency requirement. By the time of Roe v. Wade in 1973, abortion was also legally available in Alaska and Washington .

In 1969, Norma McCorvey, a Texas woman in her early 20s, sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. McCorvey, who had grown up in difficult, impoverished circumstances, previously had given birth twice and given up both children for adoption. At the time of McCorvey’s pregnancy in 1969 abortion was legal in Texas—but only for the purpose of saving a woman’s life.

While American women with the financial means could obtain abortions by traveling to other countries where the procedure was safe and legal, or pay a large fee to a U.S. doctor willing to secretly perform an abortion, those options were out of reach to McCorvey and many other women.

As a result, some women resorted to illegal, dangerous, “back-alley” abortions or self-induced abortions. In the 1950s and 1960s, the estimated number of illegal abortions in the United States ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

After trying unsuccessfully to get an illegal abortion, McCorvey was referred to Texas attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were interested in challenging anti-abortion laws.

In court documents, McCorvey became known as “Jane Roe.”

In 1970, the attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of McCorvey and all the other women “who were or might become pregnant and want to consider all options,” against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, where McCorvey lived.

Earlier, in 1964, Wade was in the national spotlight when he prosecuted Jack Ruby , who killed Lee Harvey Oswald , the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy .

Supreme Court Ruling

In June 1970, a Texas district court ruled that the state’s abortion ban was illegal because it violated a constitutional right to privacy. Afterward, Wade declared he’d continue to prosecute doctors who performed abortions.

The case eventually was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, McCovey gave birth and put the child up for adoption.

On Jan 22, 1973, the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, struck down the Texas law banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure nationwide. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun , the court declared that a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment .

The court divided pregnancy into three trimesters, and declared that the choice to end a pregnancy in the first trimester was solely up to the woman. In the second trimester, the government could regulate abortion, although not ban it, in order to protect the mother’s health.

In the third trimester, the state could prohibit abortion to protect a fetus that could survive on its own outside the womb, except when a woman’s health was in danger.

Legacy of Roe v. Wade

Norma McCorvey maintained a low profile following the court’s decision, but in the 1980s she was active in the abortion rights movement.

However, in the mid-1990s, after becoming friends with the head of an anti-abortion group and converting to Catholicism, she turned into a vocal opponent of the procedure.

Since Roe v. Wade , many states imposed restrictions that weaken abortion rights, and Americans remain divided over support for a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

In 1992, litigation against Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act reached the Supreme Court in a case called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey . The court upheld the central ruling in Roe v. Wade but allowed states to pass more abortion restrictions as long as they did not pose an “undue burden."

Roe v. Wade Overturned

In 2022, the nation's highest court deliberated on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , which regarded the constitutionality of a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts had ruled the law was unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade . Under Roe , states had been prohibited from banning abortions before around 23 weeks—when a fetus is considered able to survive outside a woman's womb.

In its decision , the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Mississippi's law—and overturned Roe after its nearly 50 years as precedent.

Abortion in American History. The Atlantic . High Court Rules Abortion Legal in First 3 Months. The New York Times . Norma McCorvey. The Washington Post . Sarah Weddington. Time . When Abortion Was a Crime , Leslie J. Reagan. University of California Press .

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FiveThirtyEight

The supreme court’s argument for overturning roe v. wade.

By Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

Jun. 24, 2022, at 12:11 PM

Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

The Supreme Court just overturned one of the most famous and controversial rulings in modern history. A five-justice majority of Republican appointees ruled that Roe v. Wade and a following case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, were wrongly decided. It’s a political earthquake — one that will reverberate for months and years to come, reshaping American lives in ways that are easy and not so easy to predict.

Now, according to the Supreme Court, there is no constitutional right to abortion. Over the protests of Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban but not to overturn Roe, the status quo of the past 49 years is gone. (The three liberal justices dissented in full.) That shift will cause an immediate change in many Americans’ lives. As of 11 a.m. Eastern on Friday, abortion is already almost completely illegal in at least four states. By the end of July, it will be almost completely illegal in at least another nine. And the fight over how far abortion rights should stretch or shrink will flare up in many states, surely shaping some of this year’s most important midterm races.

We will have plenty of coverage of the aftershocks in the coming days, and our colleagues at ABC News have already begun their round-the-clock coverage. But before we focus on the aftermath of the decision, it’s worth dwelling on the decision itself. Friday’s ruling is a manifestation of the devotion to constitutional history that the court’s conservatives have become known for, and it’s packed with hints about what could be in store for the future of abortion and other legal precedents.

What the ruling said

At its heart, Roe v. Wade was about how much states could restrict abortion. In that ruling, states were prohibited from banning abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy and their ability to regulate abortion was limited during the second trimester. That structure changed with Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a Supreme Court case decided in 1992, which replaced the trimester framework with a single dividing line: fetal viability. Even with that change, Americans had a constitutional right to abortion up to a certain point in pregnancy for almost 50 years. 

In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, a Republican appointee, explained that this right simply never existed. “Abortion presents a profound moral question,” he wrote. “The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion.” Roe, he wrote, wasn’t simply wrong — it was so wrong as to amount to an “abuse of judicial authority.”

This week’s ruling — officially known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health — relied heavily on a historical view of abortion rights. Alito argued that approach is crucial for understanding why abortion couldn’t be constitutionally protected. “Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law,” he wrote. “Indeed, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy.” Some historians have argued that Alito’s view of this history — which was also laid out in a draft opinion that leaked in early May — isn’t complete. But it’s worth emphasizing because another major opinion released yesterday , overturning a concealed-carry law in New York, also relies heavily on history.

Alito acknowledged that a major precedent was being overturned, but he argued that it had to be done because the justices who decided Casey actually made a mistake by relying too heavily on precedent. The court is not required to uphold a previous ruling simply because it’s already on the books, he wrote. In fact, “the Constitution and the rule of law demand” that the question of abortion be returned to the states.

The ruling is likely to be unpopular . Alito addressed that too: “We cannot exceed the scope of our authority under the Constitution, and we cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work.” That was another place, he argued, where the justices who decided Casey got it wrong. In that ruling, the majority explicitly noted that overturning Roe would be politically seismic and could undermine the court’s authority. 

Now, Alito and the other four justices who signed onto his opinion are risking just that.

What the ruling means for the future

Most Supreme Court decisions rule on the case at hand while also dropping hints about how the Supreme Court might rule on the same topic in the future. This one is no different. In his majority opinion, Alito included several caveats about what the ruling in Dobbs could mean for other precedents that relied on the same judicial framework as Roe. But concurring opinions by Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh suggest that there could be some disagreement among the conservative justices about what should happen next.

Kavanaugh, for his part, took pains to stress what the opinion didn’t say. The Constitution, he wrote, is “neutral” on the issue of abortion. Roe was a mistake, he said, because it took the power to decide whether abortion should be legal from the democratically elected branches of government. But that doesn’t mean it’s illegal everywhere, either. “The Court’s decision today does not outlaw abortion throughout the United States,” he wrote. He added that just as the court doesn’t have the authority to say that abortion is a constitutional right, it also doesn’t have the power to “declare a constitutional prohibition of abortion.” Kavanaugh also signaled how he, at least, is thinking about other legal questions that could come up in Dobbs’s wake, including whether states can bar their residents from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion. (His view: No, under the constitutional right to interstate travel.)

Kavanaugh is clearly trying to head off concerns that the court will outlaw abortion, but in Thomas’s concurring opinion, he signaled that he would like to use the ruling in Dobbs as an opportunity to reconsider other constitutional rights. “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” he wrote, referring to rulings that, respectively established constitutional rights to contraception; to engage in intimate, consensual sexual conduct; and to same-sex marriage. This could persuade advocates to bring cases challenging those precedents in the future.

Alito, for his part, clearly wanted to head off speculation about what would happen to these precedents, which the three liberal dissenters warned could now be in danger. The court’s other conservative justices are not necessarily champing at the bit to reconsider these precedents. But the question is in the air — and seems likely to come up again in the future.

Roberts, for his part, did not want to overturn Roe. In his concurring opinion, he bemoaned the broad scope of the court’s new abortion ruling. He agreed with the decision to uphold Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks, but he questioned why it was necessary to go further. The viability line established in Casey was “misguided,” he said, but he also argued that his conservative colleagues were violating the principle of judicial restraint by overturning Roe and Casey entirely. “The Court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system — regardless of how you view those cases,” he wrote.

Roberts was essentially asking his conservative colleagues to slow their roll. The liberal justices, writing in dissent, warned that the swift action in Dobbs will have serious consequences. The decision, they wrote, “says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs.”

The fact that the chief justice couldn’t convince the other Republican appointees to slow down is its own signal about where the court is going. Once the most high-profile precedent in two generations has been overturned, what might the conservative bloc be interested in changing next?

Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux is a senior editor and senior reporter for FiveThirtyEight. @ameliatd

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The Abortion Fight Has Never Been About Just Roe v. Wade

Anti-abortion-rights activists have turned their arguments away from protecting democracy and toward maximizing protection for fetal life.

This week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could result in the overruling of Roe v. Wade . The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , involves a Mississippi law that bans abortion starting at the 15th week of pregnancy . Significantly, the statute draws the line before fetal viability—the point at which survival is possible outside the womb . The Court has previously held that before viability, “ the state’s interests are not strong enough to support a prohibition of abortion or substantial obstacle to the woman’s effective right to elect the procedure .” To uphold Mississippi’s law, the Court would have to rewrite the rules—perhaps just the opportunity it needs to overturn Roe altogether.

If that happens, it will represent the culmination of decades of work by anti-abortion-rights activists. But for those activists, gutting Roe would be just the beginning.

Ever since Roe , abortion-rights foes and their Republican allies have been asking the Court to reverse course—to acknowledge that the Constitution has nothing whatsoever to say about abortion, either in favor of or against it. Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court justice arguably most beloved by conservatives, routinely stated that the Constitution is silent on abortion . Republicans have railed against the Court’s judicial activism in Roe , insisting that the justices robbed the American people of the opportunity to decide the abortion issue for themselves. In this account, Roe did not just destroy valuable opportunities for compromise on abortion ; the decision did fundamental damage to America’s democratic principles , removing one of the most controversial issues from representative legislatures and resolving it by judicial fiat.

But within the anti-abortion-rights movement, there is not so much talk about democracy anymore. Now some abortion-rights opponents are quite literally looking for a Roe of their own, asking the Court to recognize fetal rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Remember that overturning Roe wouldn’t make abortion illegal; it would mean that states could set their own abortion limits, which would no longer be subject to constitutional review. That will never be enough for anti-abortion-rights activists, though. In the conservative magazine First Things , John Finnis, a professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, recently made an argument that could provide the framework an anti-abortion-rights Supreme Court could use to outlaw abortion across the country: that the legislators who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment viewed unborn children as persons . If the Constitution recognizes fetal personhood, then unborn children would have the right to equal protection under and due process of the law. Abortion would be unconstitutional in New York as well as in Alabama. Other leading anti-abortion-rights scholars have made the same argument.

From the December 2019 issue: The dishonesty of the abortion debate

Finnis’s article has provoked debate across the ideological spectrum. The conservative attorney Ed Whelan has taken issue with the substance of Finnis’s claim, suggesting that unless the anti-abortion-rights movement first wins over public opinion, Finnis’s approach will backfire . Progressives have been far harsher, unsurprisingly. Writing in The New York Times , the columnist Michelle Goldberg denounced what she calls an authoritarian turn in anti-abortion-rights advocacy —one more sign that the GOP has changed fundamentally in the post-Trump era.

The abortion debate has never been about just Roe— and it’s never been about letting a popular majority have a say. What’s new is that this argument now meets a receptive Supreme Court for the first time in more than a generation.

The anti-abortion-rights movement mobilized in the 1960s, pre- Roe , as states began loosening criminal abortion laws . From quite early on, abortion-rights foes defined their cause as a constitutional one—a defense of the rights of unborn children. Anti-abortion-rights lawyers argued that everything from “ the Declaration of Independence [to] the United States Declaration of Human Rights ” protected a fetal right to life. Then as now, anti-abortion-rights lawyers paid particular attention to the Fourteenth Amendment . One of the post–Civil War provisions passed during Reconstruction, the amendment guarantees “persons” equal protection under the law and due process of the law. Quite clearly, the amendment extended those protections to recently freed Black people. Long before Roe , anti-abortion-rights leaders insisted that the Fourteenth Amendment did the same thing for unborn children . Their argument was simple: If fetuses qualify as persons under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Constitution itself prohibits abortion.

The appeal of this personhood argument to those who believe that a fetus is a person created in God’s image or is otherwise sacred is obvious . When states proposed laws allowing abortion only in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality, or a severe threat to the mother’s health, anti-abortion-rights activists almost universally rejected them. Believing that unborn children have a right to life, the movement’s leaders rejected any middle-ground law as unconstitutional and immoral.

But arguments for personhood under the Fourteenth Amendment also attracted support partly because, leading up to Roe , abortion-rights foes viewed the courts as a potential ally. Across the country, lawyers went on the offensive, asking courts to appoint them the guardians of unborn children or to reinstate criminal laws that legislatures had wiped away. Their optimism seemed reasonable until the Supreme Court decided Roe. While recognizing a privacy right to end a pregnancy, the Court also rejected the case for personhood under the Fourteenth Amendment .

In recent decades, strategies like Finnis’s have rarely dominated national conversations. That’s not primarily because abortion-rights opponents changed their mind about the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, talking about personhood seemed to be a waste of time. After all, following Roe , the courts appeared to be antagonists rather than allies.

Moreover, by the early 1980s, the anti-abortion-rights movement had come to rely on the Republican Party, which Ronald Reagan had made the “party of life.” And the Fourteenth Amendment argument did not work as well for the movement’s new Republican allies. GOP leaders had mocked the Court for inventing rights from whole cloth and stripping the people of the power to decide for themselves whether abortion should be legal. If a conservative Court effectively outlawed all abortions, people could easily accuse the justices of committing the sin that the GOP had long decried.

So instead, abortion-rights opponents argued that Roe was a prime example of judicial activism, out of step with the original, publicly understood meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Erika Bachiochi: The troubling ideals at the heart of abortion rights

In this, they found allies in the Reagan administration, which was well served by arguments about judicial activism. The president and his allies accused the Court of overreaching in Roe —and doing real damage to the country. The administration suggested that an imperial judiciary was riding roughshod over American democracy . Christian conservatives had hoped that the president would appoint judges who openly opposed abortion. But Reagan, who had vowed to depoliticize the judiciary , could hardly fulfill that promise without seeming hypocritical. Labeling Roe an activist decision—and calling for a more restrained approach to constitutional interpretation—signaled that the Reagan administration was looking for anti- Roe judges while allowing the president to say that his judges would never impose their own policy preferences on the American people. Besides, when it came to a fragmented GOP coalition, almost everyone disliked something that the Court had done recently. Hatred of judicial activism united Reagan Republicans who disagreed about much else.

So for years, anti-abortion-rights activists lambasted the Roe Court for failing to uphold democracy. But recently, their leaders seem far less concerned about popular opinion. Some states have passed sweeping laws curtailing abortion rights —many without rape or incest exceptions —even though polling suggests that the public does not support them . Talk has turned away from protecting democracy and toward maximizing protection for fetal life.

This is partly because abortion-rights opponents are optimistic about the Supreme Court—and with good reason. Donald Trump chose three new justices, creating a supermajority that seems likely to reverse Roe and perhaps go much further. The movement doesn’t feel that it has to settle anymore. The Court’s decision to take Dobbs certainly suggests that Roe is not long for this world.

Another factor is that changes to the GOP have made it easier for abortion-rights foes to pursue a personhood strategy. In past years, the Republican Party (like the Democratic Party) shied away from arguments that could expose it to charges that it had embraced extremism. In the post-Trump era, however, the GOP has been more inclined to try to energize the base or shrink the electorate than win new supporters. In earlier decades, the anti-abortion-rights movement might have hesitated to promote Finnis’s argument for fear of alienating voters—Gallup recently found that 79 percent of Americans think that at least some abortions should be legal . Today’s Republican Party does not concern itself much with popular majorities in the first place.

Is the anti-abortion-rights movement correct that a personhood argument could be welcomed by the Court? Even the most ardent supporters of a Fourteenth Amendment strategy recognize its perils. Finnis himself acknowledges that the Court would face “unimaginable resistance” if it followed his advice. Overturning Roe is one thing; recognizing fetal personhood is another. Doing so would force the Court to continue taking abortion-adjacent cases, as it might need to figure out what personhood means across a wide variety of legal domains, such as whether a fetus can make personal-injury claims and how fetuses figure into the tax code. Finnis and his allies respond to this counterargument by saying that a personhood strategy still makes sense: Social movements rarely succeed unless they fight for what they really want—and persuade the public to embrace their view of the world.

Anti-abortion-rights groups may have forgotten the most important lesson of all, though, one that pro-abortion-rights groups learned the hard way in the aftermath of Roe : Winning in the Supreme Court gets you only so far. Harry Blackmun, the author of the Roe decision, kept a clipping of a poll suggesting that the large majority of Americans believed abortion to be a decision between a woman and her doctor . In writing the Roe decision, he hoped to tamp down the controversy surrounding abortion and maybe even pave the way to a less acrimonious debate. We all see how that worked out.

This story is part of the project “ The Battle for the Constitution ,” in partnership with the National Constitution Center .

Personal Liberty Essay – Roe v. Wade (1973)

by Dennis Goldford, Ph.D.

In American constitutional law the phrase “right to privacy” refers not to questions of information and secrecy, but rather to the idea that government has no authority to interfere with the right of individuals to make their own decisions about intimately personal, fundamental matters like marriage, sexual activity, and child rearing. Though controversial, the right to privacy developed because of, and must be understood in terms of, two important questions in our constitutional system: first, how are individual rights protected against government, and, second, what individual rights are protected against government?

Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, individuals had no federal protection against actions of their own state governments. In American constitutional law the phrase “right to privacy” refers not to questions of information and secrecy, but rather to the idea that government has no authority to interfere with the right of individuals to make their own decisions about intimately personal, fundamental matters like marriage, sexual activity, and child rearing. Though controversial,  the right to privacy developed because of, and must be understood in terms of, two important  questions in our constitutional system: first, how are individual rights protected against government, and, second, what individual rights are protected against government? Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, the rights of Americans were protected (beyond a few provisions of Article I, Section 10, of the Constitution and the mechanisms of separation of powers and federalism) in three principal ways. First, individuals were protected against certain actions of the federal government by the Bill of Rights. Second, individuals were protected against certain actions of their own state governments by a bill of rights or other such provisions in the constitution of their state. Third, individuals traveling to a state other than their own were protected against certain actions of that state government by certain provisions of Article IV of the Constitution. The key point is that, at that time, individuals had no federal protection against actions of their own state governments, because the Supreme Court held in Barron v. City of Baltimore (1833) that the Bill of Rights applied to federal actions only—not to state actions. As the Court stated in Twining v. New Jersey (1908), “the first ten Amendments of the Federal Constitution are restrictive only of national action.”

Due to doubts about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which provided for federal protection for the newly freed slaves against the southern state governments, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 and stated, in part: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Supreme Court held in the Slaughter House Cases that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not now make the protections of the Bill of Rights applicable against state governments in defense of fundamental individual rights. Nevertheless, many justices believed that the Fourteenth Amendment does in fact establish a basket of fundamental rights grounded in the U.S. Constitution to be protected against state infringement. Increasingly, the Supreme Court came to argue that the idea of liberty mentioned in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides the textual basis for this basket of protected fundamental rights.

Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, individuals had no federal protection against actions of their own state governments.

If the Due Process Clause answers the question of how fundamental individual rights are protected by the Constitution against state governments, the other question became more problematic: what fundamental individual rights are protected by the Constitution against state governments? In other words, how do we know what rights are contained in that federally guaranteed basket? One answer, suggested in the late nineteenth century and supported most prominently by Justice Hugo Black in the twentieth, is that any and all rights protected against federal infringement by the Bill of Rights are protected against state infringement by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the Supreme Court as a whole has never accepted this argument. Rejecting it for the Court in Palko v. Connecticut (1937), Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote: “Whatever would be a violation of the original bill of rights (Amendments one to eight) if done by the federal government is now equally unlawful by force of the Fourteenth Amendment if done by a state. There is no such general rule.” The question remains, therefore: how do we determine what fundamental individual rights are protected by the Constitution against state governments?

Justice Cardozo went on to suggest two criteria for making that determination: a right is contained in that federally guaranteed basket of rights protected against state infringement if it is “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” or is, citing another case, a “principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental” ( Palko ). This allowed for substantial overlap between the Bill of Rights and the Due Process Clause, for the Court came to see many of the rights protected against federal infringement by the Bill of Rights as protected against state  infringement by the Due Process Clause because they satisfied either or both of these two criteria. Still, the Court’s acceptance of these two criteria in many ways simply shifted rather than solved the initial problem. How do we know if a right is one protected by the Due Process Clause? How do we then know when a right is “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” or is a “principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental”?

The problem here is that, in the absence of specific words in a written text, it appears quite difficult to get people to agree on what rights are part of ordered liberty or even on what rights are fundamental in our political and legal traditions. On the one hand, we do not want to claim more rights than are permissible, because asserting a right means limiting majority rule. On the other hand, if we want to defer to the preferences of a popular majority we run the risk of allowing that majority to infringe on individual rights that it really should not endanger. This is why the right to privacy is so controversial, for people disagree about whether it exists and, if it does, about what it protects. Thus, in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Justice William Douglas wrote with regard to marriage: “We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights—older than our political parties, older than our school system,” whereas Justice Black wrote: “I like my privacy as well as the next one, but I am nevertheless compelled to admit that government has a right to invade it unless prohibited by some specific constitutional provision.”

To be sure, also writing in Griswold , Justice Arthur Goldberg argued, “The language and history of the Ninth Amendment reveal that the Framers of the Constitution believed that there are additional fundamental rights, protected from governmental infringement, which exist alongside those fundamental rights specifically mentioned in the first eight constitutional amendments” (488). Nevertheless, almost no one either before or after Griswold appealed to the Ninth Amendment to justify the protection of an unenumerated— unmentioned—right. Thus, in Roe v. Wade , Justice Harry Blackmun stated: “This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” Whether one favors or opposed a right to abortion, it is clear that Justice Blackmun neglected to do the hard work here of dealing with the difficult interpretive questions we have raised. Specifically, why does abortion fall within the right to privacy? (Indeed, appealing to the other criterion, the dissenters in Roe argued that a right to abortion is not a principle of justice grounded in American traditions.) Why, as in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, do homosexual relations fall within the right to privacy?

We could say, of course, that there is no such thing as a right to privacy in the Constitution, because there is no blackletter textual provision containing those words. If we were to say this, however, we would have to remember that there is no black-letter text that provides for either the presumption of innocence or the power of judicial review, both of which are conventionally considered to be in the Constitution. Additionally, we would have to address what is perhaps the central question about the protection of individual rights in our constitutional system: do we have a right to make our own decisions about certain personal and even intimate matters that we consider absolutely fundamental to our identity and sense of self in the absence of an explicit, black-letter text in the Constitution that protects any such right? Long ago, in the case of Calder v. Bull, Justice Samuel Chase wrote: “I cannot subscribe to the omnipotence of a State Legislature, or that it is absolute and without controul; although its authority should not be expressly restrained by the Constitution, or fundamental law, of the State.” As you read and think about the following materials on the right to privacy, ask yourself whether you agree or disagree with Justice Chase.

Dr. Dennis Goldford is Professor of Politics and International Relations at Drake University in Iowa. He teaches in the areas of political theory and constitutional law, and his recent research deals with the originalism debate in contemporary constitutional theory. He has published numerous articles in the areas of political theory and constitutional interpretation, and his recent book is entitled The American Constitution and the Debate Over Originalism (Cambridge, 2005). His current research deals with politics and religion, and with the theory of federalism. Professor Goldford is also a frequent commentator on Iowa and national politics through both local and national media outlets.

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Reproductive rights in America

Supreme court overturns roe v. wade, ending right to abortion upheld for decades.

Nina Totenberg

Sarah McCammon

Anti-abortion activists rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 6. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption

Anti-abortion activists rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 6.

In a historic and far-reaching decision, the U.S. Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade on Friday, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion, upheld for nearly a half century , no longer exists.

Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the 1973 Roe ruling and repeated subsequent high court decisions reaffirming Roe "must be overruled" because they were "egregiously wrong," the arguments "exceptionally weak" and so "damaging" that they amounted to "an abuse of judicial authority."

The decision, most of which was leaked in early May, means that abortion rights will be rolled back in nearly half of the states immediately, with more restrictions likely to follow. For all practical purposes, abortion will not be available in large swaths of the country. The decision may well mean too that the court itself, as well as the abortion question, will become a focal point in the upcoming fall elections and in the fall and thereafter.

Roe v. Wade and the future of reproductive rights in America

What might life look like in a post-roe america.

Joining the Alito opinion were Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by the first President Bush, and the three Trump appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush, concurred in the judgment only, and would have limited the decision to upholding the Mississippi law at issue in the case, which banned abortions after 15 weeks. Calling the decision "a serious jolt to the legal system," he said that both the majority and dissent displayed "a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue that I cannot share."

Dissenting were Justices Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Clinton, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, appointed by President Obama. The said that the court decision means that "young women today will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers." Indeed, they said the court's opinion means that "from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term even at the steepest personal and familial costs."

"With sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent," they wrote.

Alito's opinion is a tour de force of the various criticisms of Roe that have long existed in academia

Alito's 78-page opinion, which has a 30-page appendix, seemingly leaves no authority uncited as support for the proposition that there is no inherent right to privacy or personal autonomy in various provisions of the Constitution — and similarly, no evidence that peoples' reliance on the court's abortion precedents over the past half century should matter.

Alito pointed for instance, to Planned Parenthood v. Casey , the 1992 decision that upheld the central holding of Roe and was written by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter, all Republican appointees to the court. Alito pointed to language in the Casey opinion that he said "conceded" reliance interests were not really implicated because contraception could prevent almost all unplanned pregnancies.

The movement against abortion rights is nearing its apex. But it began way before Roe

In fact, though, that 1992 opinion went on to dismiss that very argument as "unrealistic," because it "refuse[s] to face the fact" that for decades "people have organized intimate relationships and made choices ... in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail." Not exactly the concession that Alito described.

It is not unusual for justices to cherry pick quotes but not so out of context and not from former colleagues who are still alive and privately, not amused at all.

In the end, though, Alito's opinion has a larger objective, perhaps multiple objectives.

Writing for the majority, he said forthrightly that abortion is a matter to be decided by states and the voters in the states. "We hold," he wrote, that "the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion." As to what standard the courts should apply in the event that a state regulation is challenged, Alito said any state regulation of abortion is presumptively valid and "must be sustained if there is a rational basis on which the legislature could have thought" it was serving "legitimate state interests," including "respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development." In addition, he noted, states are entitled to regulate abortion to eliminate "gruesome and barbaric" medical procedures; to "preserve the integrity of the medical profession"; and to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability, including barring abortion in cases of fetal abnormality.

Ultimately, the translation of all that is that states appear to be completely free to ban abortions for any reason.

Now that Roe is gone, a process that allows minors to get an abortion could disappear

Near the end of Friday's decision, Alito sought to allay fears about the wide-ranging nature of his opinion. "To ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion. "

But in his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas said the legal rationale for Friday's decision could be applied to overturn other major cases, including those that legalized gay marriage, barred the criminalization of consensual homosexual conduct, and protected the rights of married people to have access to contraception.

"For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all" of those precedents. because they are "demonstrably erroneous.'"

The court's liberals noted that Thomas's language cast doubt on Alito's assurances at the end of his opinion, that this opinion was really only about abortion.

"The first problem with the majority's account comes from Justice Thomas's concurrence—which makes clear he is not with the program," they wrote. "In saying that nothing in today's opinion casts doubt on non-abortion precedents, Justice Thomas explains, he means only that they are not at issue in this very case."

The next steps on abortion across the country will play out in a variety of ways, almost all of them resulting in abortion bans.

Several states — among them Mississippi, North Carolina, and Wisconsin — still have decades-old abortion bans on their books; with Roe overturned, those states could revert to a pre- Roe environment. Officials in such states could seek to enforce old laws, or ask the courts to reinstate them. For example, a Michigan law dating back to 1931 would make abortion a felony. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has been working to try to block that law.

A cascade of newly active state laws

Another path to banning abortion involves "trigger bans," newer laws pushed through by anti-abortion rights legislators in many states in anticipation of the Supreme Court's action. Some 15 states – in the South, West and Midwest – have such laws in place, according to CRR and Guttmacher, but they fall into different categories.

Some states will act quickly to ban abortion. According to a new analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, South Dakota, Kentucky and Louisiana have laws in place that lawmakers designed explicitly to take effect immediately upon the fall of the Roe precedent. Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas – where most abortions are already illegal after about six weeks of pregnancy – have similar laws, which would take effect after 30 days. Guttmacher says seven other "trigger ban" states have laws that would require state officials such as governors or attorneys general to take action to implement them.

These 26 states would ban or restrict abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned

Sue Liebel, state policy director with the anti-abortion rights group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said she expects officials in many of those Republican-controlled states to take swift action to do so.

"We have been talking to all of those about acting immediately," Liebel told NPR . "So when that happens, let's be ready. How do you get that back into play?"

In recent years, many states also have passed gestational bans prohibiting abortion at various stages of pregnancy. Courts have blocked many of those laws in response to legal challenges, including laws in Georgia, Ohio, and Idaho that ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Now those laws may take effect immediately. So too, could a law recently enacted in Oklahoma , that makes performing abortion a felony punishable by time in prison.

"It will be a tremendous change in an incredibly short period of time," said Julie Rikelman, senior director of litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights. Rikelman argued the Center's challenge to Mississippi's abortion ban at Supreme Court this term.

A host of other restrictions could limit where, by whom, and under what conditions abortion can be provided. Some examples include laws requiring parental notification or consent for abortions involving patients who are minors; and other health regulations for doctors and clinics that many medical groups say are unnecessary, expensive, and difficult to comply with.

Could overturning Roe v. Wade have implications beyond abortion?

Finally, Liebel said some governors may consider calling special sessions to pass new legislation in response to Friday's ruling.

More legal uncertainty

Legal experts say the court's decision will pose new questions for other courts to deal with – questions about how to apply the specific language of the final ruling to individual state laws.

Rikelman, the Center for Reproductive rights attorney, predicts "legal chaos" in states across the country in the immediate aftermath of the decision.

"I think what we will see is far more litigation in the federal courts – not less litigation," Rikelman said.

Some states such as Texas and Oklahoma have multiple abortion restrictions on the books, raising potential questions about which ones would be valid. Those laws each include different provisions and carry different penalties, adding to the potential confusion and prompting additional litigation in state and federal courts.

Liebel, with SBA Pro-Life America, acknowledged that more legal battles are likely.

"That's gonna take us back, frankly, to where we always have been. Each side tries to put their big toe right on that line and push the envelope," Liebel said.

Battles in state courts are also likely. Some state constitutions may offer protections for abortion rights notwithstanding the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. In Florida, for example, the American Civil Liberties Union and other reproductive rights groups are challenging a 15-week abortion ban modeled on Mississippi's law, on the grounds that it violates privacy rights protections guaranteed in Florida's state constitution.

Roe v. Wade's future is in doubt after historic arguments at Supreme Court

Even without overturning Roe , Rikelman points to the Texas law known as S.B. 8, which took effect in September . The law, which has spawned several copycat proposals in other states, including Oklahoma , relies on individuals filing civil lawsuits to enforce an abortion ban.

Interstate enforcement battles

Abortion bans in restrictive states will likely bleed over to states that protect abortion rights as well, Rikelman said. She notes that some state lawmakers are trying to prohibit people in other states from providing abortions to their residents.

"What we are seeing already are states and state legislators impacting even people's ability to access abortion in places where it would remain legal," she said.

For example, an omnibus abortion law passed by a Republican supermajority in Kentucky earlier this year includes a host of new requirements for dispensing medication abortion pills, and a provision for extraditing people from other states who illegally provide abortion pills to Kentuckians. It's unclear how enforceable those types of laws would be.

Meanwhile, some states are trying to expand access to abortion in preparation for more patients traveling from restrictive states for procedures. Connecticut lawmakers passed legislation this year designed to protect abortion providers from out-of-state lawsuits.

"This just raises a whole host of issues," Rikelman said. "All of those different disputes will have to be worked out in the courts" including, potentially, in the U.S. Supreme Court.

What's more, the anti-abortion movement will not be satisfied with this win, observes University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman. "The next time the Republicans win control of the Senate and White House and the House of Representatives a national abortion ban is going to be on the table," she said in an interview.

Even as abortions have now become far more restricted overall, the Guttmacher Institute reports that the long-term decline in abortions has reversed. In 2020, there were 930,160 abortions in the U.S., an increase of 8 percent more abortions than in 2017. The Institute also said that at the same time, fewer people were getting pregnant and among those who did, a larger proportion chose to have an abortion.

The Century Foundation The Century Foundation The Century Foundation

State of Emergency: What’s At Stake for Abortion and Voting Rights as Roe v. Wade Turns Forty-Nine?

January 22 marks the forty-ninth anniversary of Roe v. Wade —and potentially its last. Before this legal precedent can reach its half-century mark, the newly reshaped U.S. Supreme Court is poised to overturn or gut the right to abortion entirely. On December 1, the Court heard arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , a case regarding Mississippi’s fifteen-week ban on abortion and a direct challenge to Roe . The justices’ questions in those oral arguments offered little hope that they will uphold Roe v. Wade in their decision this spring.

The legal right to abortion under Roe v. Wade has never been enough to guarantee actual access—particularly for people struggling to make ends meet and people of color. Because of the Hyde Amendment and related budget riders , as well as funding restrictions created at the state level, coverage of abortion care is limited, even for those who have insurance. The prevalence of other medically unnecessary and politically motivated state laws that restrict access, such as TRAP laws and multiple-visit requirements, push abortion out of reach for too many. As a result, there are multiple states with only one abortion clinic, and twenty-seven cities with populations of over 100,000 that are classified as abortion deserts —areas without a clinic within 100 miles. But an end to Roe entirely will further fracture access by state, and put abortion out of reach for the millions of people who cannot afford to travel for their care.

Texas Offers a Glimpse into a Grim Future

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not wait until a decision on Dobbs to strip abortion access even further. On December 10, Texas’ SB8 —which allows any person (other than a state official) to sue anyone who “aids or abets” access to an abortion past six weeks of pregnancy—was allowed to remain in effect. This law has survived challenges so far because it is working precisely as designed—in relying on someone other than state officials as the means of enforcement the law removes officials as would-be defendants and thus eliminates the traditional method of challenging the law in court. The December opinion made things even worse by handing a win to Texas and thus preventing similar federal challenges to the many copycat laws already being prefiled and introduced in other state legislatures. 

Meanwhile, on Roe ’s anniversary, Texas—with Roe theoretically still in place—will have been without meaningful access to abortion for 148 days and counting. The impacts reach beyond Texas, as clinics in other states receive Texas residents for care. Given that SB8 remains in effect, and if Roe falls completely, the states where abortion remains legal will be overwhelmed by an influx of patients. The implications of abortion care being restricted at this scale are unprecedented in recent times—but existing evidence gives us an idea of what to expect.

When Abortion Is Out of Reach

There is a wealth of evidence on what happens when people are denied abortion care. By studying the experience of women 1  who were turned away from clinics due to gestational limits, the researchers from the Turnaway Study were able to compare their outcomes with those of women who received their wanted abortion care. This research showed that denial of abortion care places women at greater risk for physical violence from the man involved in the pregnancy, and make women more likely to raise their children alone. 

Abortion denial has also been linked to economic harship and financial insecurity, including greater odds of living in poverty and being unable to pay for basic needs such as food and housing. A separate body of research demonstrates that abortion legality resulted in economic gains for women, including greater educational attainment. Reproductive and economic justice go hand-in-hand : women’s contributions to the economy rely in part on reproductive health supports such as abortion access. For instance, reproductive health access bolsters women’s participation in the workforce by reducing job lock and fostering mobility in the labor market. 

Of course, when legal abortion is out of reach, people may use available online resources to obtain medication abortion pills outside of the formal health care system. Although medication abortion care is overwhelmingly physically safe, it can carry legal risks: a post- Roe future will likely mean an increased risk of criminalization of self-managed abortion in some states. These risks will be highest to communities that are already criminalized at disproportionate rates , particularly Black women and girls .

In order to address the assault on reproductive freedoms, it is necessary to understand its connections to attacks on another freedom facing a similar onslaught: the right to vote.

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Voter suppression is a reproductive justice issue.

Crucially, this last anniversary of Roe comes at a time when the Senate is debating protections to voting rights. Reproductive justice organizations—and Black women leaders in particular—have long sounded the alarm on the need to recognize the connection between reproductive oppression and voter suppression . Attacks on these rights impact the same communities disproportionately: Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, people living on low incomes, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, people with disabilities, and young people. And as people are disenfranchised of their right to vote largely in the South, these same states pass increasingly restrictive abortion laws. 

As articulated in a 2012 report from the Center for American Progress: 

Women of color stand at the crossroads of what is in essence a double disenfranchisement. When they are denied the opportunity to participate in civic life, they also lose the ability to voice their opinions and hold lawmakers accountable on the reproductive health issues that directly affect them.

The ties between white supremacists and anti-abortion groups are no secret , so it should not be a surprise to see anti-abortion groups engaging actively in voter suppression. In order to address the dual crises of voting rights and abortion access, it is past time that we heed the calls of reproductive justice leaders and recognize the intrinsic connections between the two.

A Way Forward

Despite the warning signs at the Supreme Court and restrictive laws proliferating at the state level, there are still reasons for hope and opportunities for proactive policy. First, the Senate must overcome the obstacle of the filibuster to pass voting rights reform to halt voter suppression efforts at the state level, where the vast majority of abortion policy is made.

The Senate must also vote and pass the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), which has already passed the House of Representatives. WHPA would create a statutory right to provide and receive abortion care, free from medically unnecessary restrictions such as the hundreds currently in place across the country. In addition, the Senate must take up the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH) Act, and pass annual appropriations legislation free from harmful abortion riders such as the Hyde Amendment.

Recent changes to the FDA’s restrictions on mifepristone, a drug used for medication abortion care , are steps in the right direction for abortion access. With the permanent removal of unnecessary in-person dispensing requirements, more people will be able to access abortion care without expensive, burdensome, and potentially prohibitive travel. However, this change will not benefit abortion patients who live in the nineteen states that already ban the use of telemedicine for abortion care. And for patients who are ineligible for medication abortion care, such as those beyond the gestational limits, as well as those who prefer to receive care in-person, brick and mortar clinics must be kept open and accessible. Additionally, it is time to consider innovative ideas that have been proposed for the Biden–Harris administration to secure abortion access, both in-clinic and for medication abortion care. Abortion care should always be offered with compassion, centering the pregnant person, and promoting dignity and respect in the way they recieve health care.

On this (likely final) anniversary of Roe v. Wade , it is necessary to be realistic about the state of abortion access in the United States. Roe has always been the floor, not the ceiling, of making abortion care available to all, but come June we will likely lose the protection it does offer. We must follow the leadership of Black women and reproductive justice organizations in recognizing attacks on abortion access as part of a broader movement to restrict the rights of oppressed communities—including voting suppression—and use all avenues possible to ensure that abortion is accessible, with or without Roe .

header photo: Participants hold signs at the Women’s March “Hold The Line For Abortion Justice” at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC. Source: Shannon Finney/Getty Images for Women’s March Inc.

• Although people of all genders receive abortion care, this section uses “women” to refer accurately to the referenced data.

Tags: abortion access , roe v. wade

Anna Bernstein, Fellow and Deputy Director of Health Equity and Reform

Anna Bernstein is a health care policy fellow and deputy director of health equity and reform at The Century Foundation, where she works on issues related to maternal and reproductive health.

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Pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion: an argument for abortion rights featuring the rev. carlton veazey.

Since the Supreme Court’s historic 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade , the issue of a woman’s right to an abortion has fostered one of the most contentious moral and political debates in America. Opponents of abortion rights argue that life begins at conception – making abortion tantamount to homicide. Abortion rights advocates, in contrast, maintain that women have a right to decide what happens to their bodies – sometimes without any restrictions.

To explore the case for abortion rights, the Pew Forum turns to the Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, who for more than a decade has been president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Based in Washington, D.C., the coalition advocates for reproductive choice and religious freedom on behalf of about 40 religious groups and organizations. Prior to joining the coalition, Veazey spent 33 years as a pastor at Zion Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

A counterargument explaining the case against abortion rights is made by the Rev. J. Daniel Mindling, professor of moral theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary.

Featuring: The Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, President, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

Interviewer: David Masci, Senior Research Fellow, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Question & Answer

Can you explain how your Christian faith informs your views in support of abortion rights?

I grew up in a Christian home. My father was a Baptist minister for many years in Memphis, Tenn. One of the things that he instilled in me – I used to hear it so much – was free will, free will, free will. It was ingrained in me that you have the ability to make choices. You have the ability to decide what you want to do. You are responsible for your decisions, but God has given you that responsibility, that option to make decisions.

I had firsthand experience of seeing black women and poor women being disproportionately impacted by the fact that they had no choices about an unintended pregnancy, even if it would damage their health or cause great hardship in their family. And I remember some of them being maimed in back-alley abortions; some of them died. There was no legal choice before Roe v. Wade .

But in this day and time, we have a clearer understanding that men and women are moral agents and equipped to make decisions about even the most difficult and complex matters. We must ensure a woman can determine when and whether to have children according to her own conscience and religious beliefs and without governmental interference or coercion. We must also ensure that women have the resources to have a healthy, safe pregnancy, if that is their decision, and that women and families have the resources to raise a child with security.

The right to choose has changed and expanded over the years since Roe v. Wade . We now speak of reproductive justice – and that includes comprehensive sex education, family planning and contraception, adequate medical care, a safe environment, the ability to continue a pregnancy and the resources that make that choice possible. That is my moral framework.

You talk about free will, and as a Christian you believe in free will. But you also said that God gave us free will and gave us the opportunity to make right and wrong choices. Why do you believe that abortion can, at least in some instances, be the right choice?

Dan Maguire, a former Jesuit priest and professor of moral theology and ethics at Marquette University, says that to have a child can be a sacred choice, but to not have a child can also be a sacred choice.

And these choices revolve around circumstances and issues – like whether a person is old enough to care for a child or whether a woman already has more children than she can care for. Also, remember that medical circumstances are the reason many women have an abortion – for example, if they are having chemotherapy for cancer or have a life-threatening chronic illness – and most later-term abortions occur because of fetal abnormalities that will result in stillbirth or the death of the child. These are difficult decisions; they’re moral decisions, sometimes requiring a woman to decide if she will risk her life for a pregnancy.

Abortion is a very serious decision and each decision depends on circumstances. That’s why I tell people: I am not pro-abortion, I am pro-choice. And that’s an important distinction.

You’ve talked about the right of a woman to make a choice. Does the fetus have any rights?

First, let me say that the religious, pro-choice position is based on respect for human life, including potential life and existing life.

But I do not believe that life as we know it starts at conception. I am troubled by the implications of a fetus having legal rights because that could pit the fetus against the woman carrying the fetus; for example, if the woman needed a medical procedure, the law could require the fetus to be considered separately and equally.

From a religious perspective, it’s more important to consider the moral issues involved in making a decision about abortion. Also, it’s important to remember that religious traditions have very different ideas about the status of the fetus. Roman Catholic doctrine regards a fertilized egg as a human being. Judaism holds that life begins with the first breath.

What about at the very end of a woman’s pregnancy? Does a fetus acquire rights after the point of viability, when it can survive outside the womb? Or let me ask it another way: Assuming a woman is healthy and her fetus is healthy, should the woman be able to terminate her pregnancy until the end of her pregnancy?

There’s an assumption that a woman would end a viable pregnancy carelessly or without a reason. The facts don’t bear this out. Most abortions are performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Late abortions are virtually always performed for the most serious medical and health reasons, including saving the woman’s life.

But what if such a case came before you? If you were that woman’s pastor, what would you say?

I would talk to her in a helpful, positive, respectful way and help her discuss what was troubling her. I would suggest alternatives such as adoption.

Let me shift gears a little bit. Many Americans have said they favor a compromise, or reaching a middle-ground policy, on abortion. Do you sympathize with this desire and do you think that both sides should compromise to end this rancorous debate?

I have been to more middle-ground and common-ground meetings than I can remember and I’ve never been to one where we walked out with any decision.

That being said, I think that we all should agree that abortion should be rare. How do we do that? We do that by providing comprehensive sex education in schools and in religious congregations and by ensuring that there is accurate information about contraception and that contraception is available. Unfortunately, the U.S. Congress has not been willing to pass a bill to fund comprehensive sex education, but they are willing to put a lot of money into failed and harmful abstinence-only programs that often rely on scare tactics and inaccurate information.

Former Surgeon General David Satcher has shown that abstinence-only programs do not work and that we should provide young people with the information to protect themselves. Education that stresses abstinence and provides accurate information about contraception will reduce the abortion rate. That is the ground that I stand on. I would say that here is a way we can work together to reduce the need for abortions.

Abortion has become central to what many people call the “culture wars.” Some consider it to be the most contentious moral issue in America today. Why do many Catholics, evangelical Christians and other people of faith disagree with you?

I was raised to respect differing views so the rigid views against abortion are hard for me to understand. I will often tell someone on the other side, “I respect you. I may disagree with your theological perspective, but I respect your views. But I think it’s totally arrogant for you to tell me that I need to believe what you believe.” It’s not that I think we should not try to win each other over. But we have to respect people’s different religious beliefs.

But what about people who believe that life begins at conception and that terminating a pregnancy is murder? For them, it may not just be about respecting or tolerating each other’s viewpoints; they believe this is an issue of life or death. What do you say to people who make that kind of argument?

I would say that they have a right to their beliefs, as do I. I would try to explain that my views are grounded in my religion, as are theirs. I believe that we must ensure that women are treated with dignity and respect and that women are able to follow the dictates of their conscience – and that includes their reproductive decisions. Ultimately, it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that women have the ability to make decisions of conscience and have access to reproductive health services.

Some in the anti-abortion camp contend that the existence of legalized abortion is a sign of the self-centeredness and selfishness of our age. Is there any validity to this view?

Although abortion is a very difficult decision, it can be the most responsible decision a person can make when faced with an unintended pregnancy or a pregnancy that will have serious health consequences.

Depending on the circumstances, it might be selfish to bring a child into the world. You know, a lot of people say, “You must bring this child into the world.” They are 100 percent supportive while the child is in the womb. As soon as the child is born, they abort the child in other ways. They abort a child through lack of health care, lack of education, lack of housing, and through poverty, which can drive a child into drugs or the criminal justice system.

So is it selfish to bring children into the world and not care for them? I think the other side can be very selfish by neglecting the children we have already. For all practical purposes, children whom we are neglecting are being aborted.

This transcript has been edited for clarity, spelling and grammar.

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Key facts about the abortion debate in america, public opinion on abortion, three-in-ten or more democrats and republicans don’t agree with their party on abortion, partisanship a bigger factor than geography in views of abortion access locally, do state laws on abortion reflect public opinion, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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The fight over US abortion rights in the year without Roe – photo essay

A look back on the year since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade with the Dobbs decision, and the advocates who aren’t giving up

While the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade sent shockwaves around the country, many activists, physicians and advocacy groups closely engaged in the fight over abortion in the US were not surprised.

Since Roe’s establishment of the federal right to abortion in 1973, anti-abortion advocates and conservative lawmakers have been chipping away at it. Restrictions on abortion increased over the last decade, and by the mid-2010s, seven states had just one abortion clinic left. In Mississippi, where the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that ultimately ended Roe originated, the state’s one clinic did not provide abortions beyond 16 weeks of pregnancy, meaning many people already had to travel to find care.

For residents in a state with the highest poverty rate in the nation, where there is no guaranteed childcare, and where elected officials have refused to expand Medicaid to cover low-income workers, that often meant obtaining an abortion was unlikely. For those who do move forward with pregnancies, the state doesn’t make that easy either. The states like Mississippi that have now passed the strictest abortion laws are also typically the ones with the lowest minimum wages , the least generous policies that support families, least access to education and to health care. In many southern states, the rates of maternal and infant mortality and morbidity are among the highest in the country. The US has the highest maternal death rate of any wealthy country, and Black women suffer most – they’re three to four times as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as white women.

The ways the US healthcare system has treated Black people continues to affect their health in profound ways, says Dr Nina Ragunanthan, an OB-GYN who serves the largely low-income Black community in Mississippi’s Delta region.

“You take a group of people that have been so abused for generations,” she says, “the essential stress from that passes down.” Ragunanthan and other doctors say these inherited health challenges combined with ongoing racism mean that abortion bans and their subsequent effects, from medical providers moving away from states with restrictive laws to the potential of criminal penalties, have a disproportionate impact on Black Americans.

In the days after the Dobbs decision, protesters flooded the Pink House, as the Jackson Women’s Health Organization clinic was known. The Pink House Defenders, the group of volunteers who escorted patients to and from the clinic, were used to seeing regular, sometimes heated demonstrations outside, and so tried to keep things as normal as possible for patients, said Derenda Hancock, the group’s founder. “We are just trying to be here for the patients until the last moment.”

Destiny Buchauau had her son at 14 and had her daughter a few months before the Dobbs ruling. She dropped out of school and lives in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, with her children and extended family.

Activist Linda Nicole Stringfellow always has condoms, emergency contraception, and pregnancy tests in her office in Cleveland, Mississippi. Whenever someone arrives, she also provides basic sexual education.

Ebony Jones became pregnant by rape at 17 and miscarried. She later got pregnant again, but the fetus was not developing correctly. Jones had to continue to term because it was illegal to terminate at her stage. When her son was born, she held him as he was dying for 10 hours.

Shantana Stamps, has a four-month-old son at 16. She lives with her mother and aunts in Anguilla, Mississippi. While she knew that contraception existed, she did not know where to find it or who to ask.

Cathy Dolley delivered her daughter prematurely by emergency cesarean section. Years earlier, she had a miscarriage and had to keep the fetus in her uterus for 21 days because of trap laws on abortion.

Dolley has three children and has been pregnant six times. Her first daughter, T’lana La’Faith Davis, died the day she was born in 2018.

Dolley is a certified nurse. Throughout the whole miscarriage and hospital experience she understood completely what are the risks and what was happening to her body.

Many abortion clinics stopped providing care the moment the Dobbs decision came down as they scrambled to interpret what the ruling meant for their state. The Pink House closed its doors for good on 6 July, and as the summer stretched on, more abortion bans took effect. Sixty-six clinics across 15 states stopped offering abortions in the first 100 days after Roe fell, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research form that supports abortion rights.

Clinics in states where abortion remains legal saw huge increases in patients seeking care, and they tried to expand hours and staffing to meet those needs.

I went home with his birth certificate and an empty box with a black flower on it. – Ebony Jones

Doctors, patients and activists spoke out, drawing attention to the ripple effects that new abortion laws were having not only on those who sought abortions, but also on people experiencing pregnancy complications, miscarriages and on those who used medications that were caught up in the uncertainty around the new legislation. Anti-abortion doctors and advocates, meanwhile, argued that the laws were clear and doctors were at fault for any confusion about when the laws applied.

In August, the new era of abortion restrictions faced its first test at the ballot box when Kansas voters decisively rejected a measure that would have opened the state to future abortion bans. The surprising win for abortion rights supporters served as a symbol of a brewing backlash to the supreme court’s decision, and added fuel to debates within the Republican party about how far it should go with its new ability to restrict abortion.

Senator Lindsay Graham proposed a national 15-week abortion ban in September, but other conservative states faltered as they tried to agree on limits for abortion without the constraints of Roe.

The intensity of these fights increased as the country headed toward the midterm elections, where abortion was suddenly at the forefront of nearly every campaign. Members of Congress held hearings on the topic. Advocates flooded into states where more ballot measures addressed abortion, and where voters were now acutely aware of the power that state and local elected officials have over their lives.

Meanwhile, reproductive justice advocates, who had been warning for years that Roe was not enough to guarantee abortion access, ramped up their plans to help people find care. Some clinics that stopped offering abortions remained open in states with bans to provide other reproductive health services, gender-affirming care and follow-up appointments for people who terminated their pregnancies out of state.

While performing an ultrasound for a patient who was preparing for an abortion, Dr. Cheryl Hamlin saw signs of an ectopic pregnancy, which would make taking abortion pills dangerous for the patient.

Her patient had traveled multiple hours to reach the clinic and needed to return home that night, so Hamlin worked to verify the diagnosis as soon as possible with other specialists.

While some people prefer to take abortion pills on their own, Hamlin believes everyone should have medical support if they desire. Now that many states have outlawed abortion, many people are going without that support.

Kate works at the Hope Clinic for Women in Illinois, where she received an abortion in 2021. After a complicated pregnancy, she was told a future pregnancy would be dangerous but the Catholic hospital where she gave birth refused to tie her tubes.

Kate became pregnant again despite taking birth control. She experienced complications after taking abortion pills and had to have three blood transfusions. The Hope Clinic asked Kate to return to ensure the abortion was safely completed.

Many abortion clinic workers choose these jobs because they have personal experience with the topic or believe strongly in the clinics’ missions.

Grassroots groups known as abortion funds raised money to help people afford abortions and the travel, lodging, childcare and extra costs that come with seeking medical assistance far from home. People like Michelle Colon, founder of Shero in Mississippi, organized volunteers to drive more than 50 women at least 10 hours north to Illinois to obtain abortions. Colon herself drove at least 20 times between the end of June and the fall, sometimes bringing more than one patient in her car and paying for travel costs herself. She is now among the very few individuals left providing such help in Mississippi.

With the country focused on abortion in a way it hadn’t been for years, advocates tried to cut through the stigma around the topic. They held conferences, speakouts and encouraged politicians to talk about the issue on the campaign trail leading up to the November midterm elections.

Angela Michael, an anti-abortion activist and former nurse performs an ultrasound on Ashley in a recreational vehicle outside the Hope Clinic. Michael convinced Ashley not to have an abortion several years ago.

On 8 November 2022, voters delivered a ringing endorsement of abortion rights in key states, establishing new abortion protections in Michigan, California and Vermont, while rejecting efforts to restrict abortion or criminalize providers in Kentucky and Montana. Elsewhere, voters supported governors and other state level candidates who backed abortion rights in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kansas and Arizona.

As the post-Roe reality set in, abortion pills, which have been on the World Health Organization’s list of “essential medicines” for years and now account for more than half of US abortions, proved a key flash point.

Abortion rights activists see the pills, a two-drug regimen also known as medication abortion, as a key way to help people get care privately and take some of the load off brick-and-mortar clinics. Telehealth services like Hey Jane, Choix and Abortion on Demand expanded in states where abortion remains legal. The number of abortions provided by virtual-only telehealth providers increased from an average of 4,025 abortions a month (or 5% of all abortions) before Dobbs to 7,461 a month (9% of all abortions) in the first nine months after the decision, according to the Society of Family Planning’s new WeCount report . For people who couldn’t or didn’t want to use official channels, activists expanded underground networks run by groups like Las Libres and Red Necesito Arbortar that are delivering abortion pills to Americans from as far away as Mexico and India.

Michelle Colon, founder of Shero, an abortion fund in Mississippi, works with other activists to find ways to continue helping women in the south access abortion.

Plan A mobile clinic provides free basic reproductive healthcare and pre- and postnatal checkups for patients without health insurance. The clinic also refers patients to health centers that provide post-abortion checkups.

Valencia Robinson leads Mississippi in Action, a group that does advocacy and education about sexual and reproductive health issues. Robinson started this work after her own emergency c-section years ago.

April Jackson already had two kids when she got pregnant again. She went to a pregnancy center and was convinced not to have an abortion. Her youngest daughter was born with a heart defect that now needs to be constantly monitored.

April is raising her seven children on her own without any substantial support from any organizations or the state of Mississippi, where she is from and currently lives.

As a teenager, Amanda Furdge had two abortions. She never received sex education growing up in Mississippi. She later got married and had a son but escaped back home after her husband became violent. She soon learned she was pregnant again and was misled by a crisis pregnancy center after she went to them for an abortion.

Several years later she married another man, and though she did not want to have more children, she had another baby. After her second husband also became violent, Furdge got a tubal ligation and left her spouse to raise her children on her own.

Those who oppose abortion see pills as enabling a way around their favored laws. While the vast majority of Americans did not want to see Roe overturned and public opinion has only solidified in favor of abortion rights since last summer, the anti-abortion movement does not care if its positions are not widely popular. This year, Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit aiming to force the FDA to take mifepristone, one of the two drugs used for medication abortions, off the market nationwide.

After a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas agreed with the group, the supreme court eventually blocked the restrictions and maintained access for now. But the case is likely to end up back at the supreme court, where it could still upend abortion access in every state.

She asked me to show her a photo of my oldest son. And then she asked ‘what if I kill him? – Amanda Furdge

The 2023 legislative session brought a number of new state abortion bans and restrictions, though some of these have now been blocked by courts. Democratic-leaning states pushed back by allocating funding and passing new protections for abortion seekers and providers within their borders. In other places, conservative lawmakers sought to limit ballot measures related to abortion. A group of patients in Texas who say they were denied medically necessary abortions despite risks to their lives and their fetuses, sued the state seeking to clarify exceptions to its abortion bans and as physicians in other states highlighted similar situations also arguing for more health-based exceptions, lawmakers often proved skeptical and anti-abortion advocates encouraged them to hold strong.

Alejandra had an abortion in 2018. She remembers how lonely she felt during her experience. Now Alejandra provides help to other women in Arizona and talks about her story publicly to fight abortion stigma.

Throughout the spring, abortion funds continued to help people access care. But while many groups in places as diverse as Louisiana, Arizona and Colorado doubled and tripled their fundraising from before Dobbs, they are now warning that funding is lagging as the public’s attention wanes. The New York Abortion Access Fund, which has helped patients from 29 states, Washington DC and six countries access abortions in the last year, says it is on pace to run out of money by October if it does not receive more support.

Over 3,000 abortion pills were donated to Red Necesito Abortar, an activist group in Mexico so that they can be transported across the border for American women to use.

Misa (pseudonym) is an activist from a feminist collective in Matamoros, Mexico. Since the abortion laws have changed in the US, she has crossed the border multiple times to bring abortion pills to Texas.

In Mississippi, health problems continue and people like Colon, one of the few people helping residents in her state find the resources to travel and obtain abortions, says the situation feels almost like Jenga, the children’s game that involves precariously removing wooden blocks from a tower until they collapse. “They’re just pulling away everything,” she says. “There’s only a couple more blocks left. You’ve got these other blocks just kind of teetering.”

We never thought that we would be the ones who would be able to provide abortion access to women in the US. – Veronica Cruz

It’s not clear what will happen when the last block is gone. More lawsuits and legal attacks are coming, OB-GYNs are leaving states with abortion bans, and training for the next generation of medical residents in states with restrictions remains uncertain.

But for now, abortion rights advocates are not giving up.

Colon says she feels like she is fighting back against the new laws every time she gets someone to an appointment to terminate their pregnancy if that’s what they want. “You may have put up all of these hurdles, but we’re still getting folks there,” she says. “We’re basically crawling over fucking glass, we’re climbing mountains, yet we’re still getting people there.

Lola, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who has been living in California for over 20 years, prepares abortion pills provided by a Mexican organization for clandestine distribution around the US.

When Lola had an abortion a few years ago, she was alone. She is now part of a network distributing them to people in the states where abortion has been illegal since more laws started changing in June 2022.

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The Supreme Court Got It Wrong: Abortion Is Not Settled Law

By Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw

Ms. Murray is a law professor at New York University. Ms. Shaw is a contributing Opinion writer.

In his majority opinion in the case overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito insisted that the high court was finally settling the vexed abortion debate by returning the “authority to regulate abortion” to the “people and their elected representatives.”

Despite these assurances, less than two years after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, abortion is back at the Supreme Court. In the next month, the justices will hear arguments in two high-stakes cases that may shape the future of access to medication abortion and to lifesaving care for pregnancy emergencies. These cases make clear that Dobbs did not settle the question of abortion in America — instead, it generated a new slate of questions. One of those questions involves the interaction of existing legal rules with the concept of fetal personhood — the view, held by many in the anti-abortion movement, that a fetus is a person entitled to the same rights and protections as any other person.

The first case , scheduled for argument on Tuesday, F.D.A. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, is a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s protocols for approving and regulating mifepristone, one of the two drugs used for medication abortions. An anti-abortion physicians’ group argues that the F.D.A. acted unlawfully when it relaxed existing restrictions on the use and distribution of mifepristone in 2016 and 2021. In 2016, the agency implemented changes that allowed the use of mifepristone up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, rather than seven; reduced the number of required in-person visits for dispensing the drug from three to one; and allowed the drug to be prescribed by individuals like nurse practitioners. In 2021, it eliminated the in-person visit requirement, clearing the way for the drug to be dispensed by mail. The physicians’ group has urged the court to throw out those regulations and reinstate the previous, more restrictive regulations surrounding the drug — a ruling that could affect access to the drug in every state, regardless of the state’s abortion politics.

The second case, scheduled for argument on April 24, involves the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (known by doctors and health policymakers as EMTALA ), which requires federally funded hospitals to provide patients, including pregnant patients, with stabilizing care or transfer to a hospital that can provide such care. At issue is the law’s interaction with state laws that severely restrict abortion, like an Idaho law that bans abortion except in cases of rape or incest and circumstances where abortion is “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

Although the Idaho law limits the provision of abortion care to circumstances where death is imminent, the federal government argues that under EMTALA and basic principles of federal supremacy, pregnant patients experiencing emergencies at federally funded hospitals in Idaho are entitled to abortion care, even if they are not in danger of imminent death.

These cases may be framed in the technical jargon of administrative law and federal pre-emption doctrine, but both cases involve incredibly high-stakes issues for the lives and health of pregnant persons — and offer the court an opportunity to shape the landscape of abortion access in the post-Roe era.

These two cases may also give the court a chance to seed new ground for fetal personhood. Woven throughout both cases are arguments that gesture toward the view that a fetus is a person.

If that is the case, the legal rules that would typically hold sway in these cases might not apply. If these questions must account for the rights and entitlements of the fetus, the entire calculus is upended.

In this new scenario, the issue is not simply whether EMTALA’s protections for pregnant patients pre-empt Idaho’s abortion ban, but rather which set of interests — the patient’s or the fetus’s — should be prioritized in the contest between state and federal law. Likewise, the analysis of F.D.A. regulatory protocols is entirely different if one of the arguments is that the drug to be regulated may be used to end a life.

Neither case presents the justices with a clear opportunity to endorse the notion of fetal personhood — but such claims are lurking beneath the surface. The Idaho abortion ban is called the Defense of Life Act, and in its first bill introduced in 2024, the Idaho Legislature proposed replacing the term “fetus” with “preborn child” in existing Idaho law. In its briefs before the court, Idaho continues to beat the drum of fetal personhood, insisting that EMTALA protects the unborn — rather than pregnant women who need abortions during health emergencies.

According to the state, nothing in EMTALA imposes an obligation to provide stabilizing abortion care for pregnant women. Rather, the law “actually requires stabilizing treatment for the unborn children of pregnant women.” In the mifepristone case, advocates referred to fetuses as “unborn children,” while the district judge in Texas who invalidated F.D.A. approval of the drug described it as one that “starves the unborn human until death.”

Fetal personhood language is in ascent throughout the country. In a recent decision , the Alabama Supreme Court allowed a wrongful-death suit for the destruction of frozen embryos intended for in vitro fertilization, or I.V.F. — embryos that the court characterized as “extrauterine children.”

Less discussed but as worrisome is a recent oral argument at the Florida Supreme Court concerning a proposed ballot initiative intended to enshrine a right to reproductive freedom in the state’s Constitution. In considering the proposed initiative, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court repeatedly peppered Nathan Forrester, the senior deputy solicitor general who was representing the state, with questions about whether the state recognized the fetus as a person under the Florida Constitution. The point was plain: If the fetus was a person, then the proposed ballot initiative, and its protections for reproductive rights, would change the fetus’s rights under the law, raising constitutional questions.

As these cases make clear, the drive toward fetal personhood goes beyond simply recasting abortion as homicide. If the fetus is a person, any act that involves reproduction may implicate fetal rights. Fetal personhood thus has strong potential to raise questions about access to abortion, contraception and various forms of assisted reproductive technology, including I.V.F.

In response to the shifting landscape of reproductive rights, President Biden has pledged to “restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.” Roe and its successor, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, were far from perfect; they afforded states significant leeway to impose onerous restrictions on abortion, making meaningful access an empty promise for many women and families of limited means. But the two decisions reflected a constitutional vision that, at least in theory, protected the liberty to make certain intimate choices — including choices surrounding if, when and how to become a parent.

Under the logic of Roe and Casey, the enforceability of EMTALA, the F.D.A.’s power to regulate mifepristone and access to I.V.F. weren’t in question. But in the post-Dobbs landscape, all bets are off. We no longer live in a world in which a shared conception of constitutional liberty makes a ban on I.V.F. or certain forms of contraception beyond the pale.

Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University and a host of the Supreme Court podcast “ Strict Scrutiny ,” is a co-author of “ The Trump Indictments : The Historic Charging Documents With Commentary.”

Kate Shaw is a contributing Opinion writer, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a host of the Supreme Court podcast “Strict Scrutiny.” She served as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens and Judge Richard Posner.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it opened the floodgates for abortion-related lawsuits

T he Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear its first abortion case since the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade and upheaval of reproductive rights in America.

Consider how much the justices’ decision has changed the country:

Fourteen states now have total bans  and seven others have imposed substantial restrictions on access to abortion.

Some states that ban abortion are trying to keep abortion medication from crossing  their borders  and, separately, are seeking to block a federal law that allows emergency room physicians to terminate a pregnancy if medically necessary.

And an Alabama Supreme Court decision  impinging on in vitro fertilization  – a method used to produce, not end, pregnancy – was traced by critics, including President Joe Biden, to the Supreme Court’s erosion of a woman’s right to privacy in its overturning of Roe.

On the political front, abortion has catapulted to the top of election-year issues, with  Democrats  hoping public concern for restrictions  continues to help their candidates ; Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has recently floated the idea of a nationwide ban on abortion at  15 weeks of pregnancy .

All the while, public regard for the Supreme Court  has degenerated .

Such will be the culturally laden backdrop as the justices on Tuesday take up a controversy over Food and Drug Administration rules for access to the abortion pill mifepristone. A group of anti-abortion physicians has sued the FDA, challenging the agency’s assessment of the drug’s safety and claiming it improperly lifted “critical safeguards” for its use.

The group wants to diminish women’s access to the pill that is part of a two-drug regime to terminate a fetus in the early weeks and that has become the most common way of ending a pregnancy in America. Among the key provisions in dispute is one from 2016 allowing the drug to be used through 10 weeks of pregnancy, rather than seven, and a 2021 change that permits women to obtain their prescription by mail rather than in person.

Since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe, medication abortion has been responsible for an  unexpected surge  in abortions. More than 1 million abortions were undertaken in the US last year, the highest rate in more than a decade and a 10% increase from 2020.

The Biden administration, defending the FDA, had avoided referring even once to the Dobbs decision in its written brief in the new case, perhaps to avoid that constitutional flashpoint and to accentuate the broader stakes of federal regulation and expertise.

Instead, it focuses on the drug approval process.

“To the government’s knowledge, this case marks the first time any court has restricted access to an FDA approved drug by second-guessing FDA’s expert judgment about the conditions required to assure that drug’s safe use,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices, referring to a federal appellate court’s 2023 decision against the FDA.

Since mifepristone first was approved for market in 2000, more than 5 million American women have used it to end their pregnancies, Prelogar added.

Groups that have filed “friend of the court” briefs, however, invoke Dobbs and what’s happened in America since the Supreme Court dissolved nearly a half-century of abortion rights precedent.

New York, along with 22 states and the District of Columbia backing the FDA, emphasize the overall disruption to reproductive care since Dobbs and say medication abortion via telemedicine “spiked dramatically in the first year after Dobbs.”

On the other side, the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops took a page from the Dobbs opinion to reinforce their arguments against the FDA, referring to a Dobbs’ majority assertion that “Abortion is a unique act.”

“This Court acknowledges that ‘(a)bortion is inherently different from other medical procedures, because no other procedure involves the purposeful termination of a potential life,’” lawyers for the anti-abortion groups told the justices, citing previous court decisions.

Expect more abortion debates at the Supreme Court, retired Justice Breyer says

The court that will hear the mifepristone case has changed little since June 24, 2022, when it eliminated the constitutional right that had been preserved in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

A few months after the ruling, retired Justice Stephen Breyer was succeeded by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman ever to sit on the high court. The succession of those two liberal, Democratic-appointed justices maintained the 6-3 conservative-liberal majority that has been transforming the law in America.

The year after the Dobbs ruling, the justices overturned another landmark, a 1978 decision ending racial affirmative action at colleges and universities.

Meanwhile, Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Dobbs opinion, and other justices have cast doubt on elements of other social milestones, including the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that declared a right to same-sex marriage.

The court divide mirrors political divisions: All six conservatives were appointed by Republican presidents, three of them by Trump, who has bragged about his role in the Dobbs decision; the three remaining liberal justices were appointed by Democrats.

Breyer, one of the Dobbs dissenters, chided the majority in his new book published Tuesday for saying it could put an end to court cases over abortion.

“The Dobbs majority’s hope that legislatures and not courts will decide the abortion question will not be realized. After all, different states will enact different laws and enforce them differently,” Breyer wrote, listing many of the possible issues that could make it to the Supreme Court over the next few years.

“Whether the Constitution assures a woman an abortion needed to save her life, her physical health, or her mental health; whether the Constitution guarantees abortion rights to victims of rape or incest; whether states can forbid sending medical methods of abortion through the mail; whether states can prosecute those in-state persons who aid or abet out-of-state abortions; and other abortion-related questions may well lead to further Court cases, not solely legislative determinations (many of which may also be subject to judicial review),” Breyer wrote.

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How the case got to the Supreme Court

Tuesday’s Supreme Court case has spurred planned protests, and the scene in front of the marble columned court may acquire some of the atmosphere of a traditional abortion rights case. Yet FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine has a broader valence that could affect regulation and access to all drugs.

Last year, US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk sided with the Alliance in its lawsuit against the initial 2000 FDA approval of mifepristone and subsequent regulations that made the drug more available to women.

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Kacsmaryk’s decision related to 2000 approval – finding it untimely - but agreed that the FDA’s loosening of requirements in 2016 and 2021 lacked sufficient justification.

Among the 2016 changes was the increase in gestational age to 10 weeks of pregnancy, a reduction in the requisite number of in-person medical visits, and authorization for non-physician healthcare providers to prescribe the drug. In 2021, the FDA determined that an in-person dispensing requirement was no longer necessary and that a prescription could be obtained by mail.

As it appeals that decision, Justice Department lawyers representing the FDA say changes over the years came after numerous studies and scientific review. Of the 2021 decision to drop the in-person dispending requirement, it said, “The agency concluded, based in part on actual experience during the pandemic, that the requirement was no longer necessary to ensure mifepristone’s safe use.”

As a threshold matter in the case before the high court, the FDA argues that the anti-abortion physicians who do not prescribe mifepristone lack sufficient injury to establish legal “standing” even to bring the case.

The challengers contend, however, that because they undertake some emergency room duties, they would be pressed to care for women who have complications from medication abortion. They said that when restrictions were loosened in 2016 and 2021, the FDA increased the chances for ectopic pregnancies and other dangerous conditions.

“In removing crucial safeguards for the use of abortion drugs,” Erin Hawley, lead lawyer for the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, told the court in a filing, “FDA expressly counted on OB/GYN hospitalists and emergency-room doctors … to manage abortion-drug complications. When faced with these emergencies, (the doctors) have no choice but to provide immediate treatment, even though this kind of participation in an elective abortion harms their consciences and injures them in other ways.”

The Department of Justice counters that such hypothetical scenarios “cannot establish an imminent injury,” required for legal standing, and that the challengers “cannot identify even a single case where any of their members has been forced to provide such care.”

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