Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the unconstitutional “abortion rights” that were invented by the Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973, many Americans are wondering what it all means. The short answer is this: The battle over abortion will now be fought on a state-by-state basis.
States are now free to decide whether to allow any restrictions or expansion of abortion.
Some states already had trigger bans or other pre-existing abortion restrictions on the books, and those are now taking effect because the Supreme Court has ruled there’s no actual, constitutional right to abortion.
At least 13 states had trigger bans on the books. Many of those trigger bans take up to 30 days to take effect, but others are immediate.
As a result of Friday’s ruling, abortion is now illegal and has come to a halt in states like Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, Utah, South Dakota, and Kentucky.
Just received this from the AG. Our “trigger bill” has been triggered. The AG has now officially certified this and Oklahoma can immediately start enforcing laws on the books that value life! pic.twitter.com/b7ni8N8E4X
— Greg Treat (@Sen_GregTreat) June 24, 2022
“Louisiana – access to abortions ended today. The state now bans abortions, including medication abortions, with exceptions for life of the mother and for pregnancies ‘medically futile’. Louisiana’s three clinics have stopped providing abortions,” PBS’s Lisa Desjardins reports.
Brian Lawson, a reporter for WHNT News 19 in Huntsville, AL, says, “A federal judge in Montgomery has lifted the 2019 injunction that blocked Alabama’s abortion ban from going into effect. The judge found that w/ today’s Dobbs decision the legal basis for the injunction “no longer exists.”
A federal judge in Montgomery has lifted the 2019 injunction that blocked Alabama’s abortion ban from going into effect. The judge found that w/ today’s Dobbs decision the legal basis for the injunction “no longer exists.” @whnt
— Brian Lawson (@BrianLawson15) June 24, 2022
In Texas, abortion has also come to an end. While the trigger ban in Texas officially takes 30 days to kick in, The Texas Tribune reports, “Abortions in Texas have stopped after Attorney General Ken Paxton said pre-Roe bans could be in effect.”
“The remaining clinics in the state stopped providing abortion services after the state AG warned some prosecution could begin, based on pre-Roe laws. A trigger law also bans abortion 30 days after SCOTUS judgment,” Desjardins explains.
Here are where some other states stand:
- Wyoming, North Dakota, and Idaho will block most abortions within 30 days.
- In Mississippi, a trigger law kicks in within 10 days.
- A Tennessee trigger law will end abortions there within 30 days. It includes an exception if the life of the mother is in danger.
- In Ohio, a federal judge declared Friday that the state’s “heartbeat law” can now take effect, banning abortion as soon as the unborn person’s heartbeat is detected.
Other states either already have restrictions in place or are expected to quickly enact laws that ban or restrict abortion, including Georgia, South Carolina, Iowa, Indiana, West Virginia, and North Carolina.
In some states the abortion issue is more complicated, meaning there are unclear laws on the books or the states could take steps toward restricting abortion. They include Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
For example, abortion providers across Arizona have stopped executing abortions while they try to determine if a pre-1912 law, enacted before Arizona was a state, is now in effect.
A number of liberal states like California and New York are taking the opposite approach, advertising themselves as abortion hot spots for women who want to travel there from non-abortion states.
Meanwhile, certain woke companies like The Walt Disney Company, Amazon, Citigroup, Meta (Facebook), and Goldman Sachs have announced they will cover travel expenses for employees who want to travel to states like NY and California to get abortions.
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