06/24/2022
The US Supreme Court on Friday abolished the national right to choose abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalised the procedure nationwide.
Without Roe’s protections to stop states from utterly banning abortion, 26 states are expected to outlaw the procedure. Millions of people will be unable to end their pregnancies in their home state and, likely, forced to have children who they may not want, cannot afford to care for, or may have devastating health problems.
“We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the opinion for the court, referring to Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 Supreme Court decision that reaffirmed the right to abortion.
The decision is far from surprising, since a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe leaked in May. Overturning Roe has been the anti-abortion movement’s north star for nearly half a century. Grassroots activists in the powerful movement has spent the last decade hacking away at state-level abortion rights, leaving the procedure inaccessible to many in red states.
In anticipation of the landmark ruling’s demise, 13 states have passed so-called “trigger bans,” which outlaw abortion more or less automatically as soon as Roe is overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion rights. Seven states also retain abortion bans on the books from the days before Roe, which could be once again resurrected and used to limit abortion access.
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