Where State Abortion Laws Stand Without Roe
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Here’s what that means for each state.
By Julia Haines, Kaia Hubbard, and Christopher Wolf
April 26, 2023
Except:
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a challenge to a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy that experts say stands in direct opposition to what the Supreme Court decided in Roe – that states may not ban abortion prior to fetal viability, which is generally understood by experts to mean between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy. But in a 6-3 decision, the conservative supermajority on the high court sided with Mississippi, upholding its ban in a massive reversal of precedent.
With the high court’s ruling, the decision now returns to the states, which have for months appeared to be gearing up for a new abortion frontier, brashly introducing restrictions and flouting current precedent. Those bans are beginning to take shape.
Meanwhile, state-level laws and debates over medication abortion have become the new battlefront for 2023. In January 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finalized a rule change allowing pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens to begin offering abortion pills in qualifying states. The move could increase access to the pills at both physical stores and online pharmacies, and has sparked legal questions, particularly in the most restrictive states. An analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, found that medication abortion – often a two-drug combination of mifepristone and misoprostol – accounted for more than half of all facility-based abortions in 2020.
Legal debates over access to abortion medication were elevated to the Supreme Court on April 14, after two conflicting rulings on separate cases were both issued a week earlier. In one case, a Texas federal judge ruled that the FDA overlooked “legitimate safety concerns” when approving mifepristone, and ruled that access to the drug be suspended. In the other, a Washington state federal judge ruled that the FDA cannot restrict access to the drug in any of the 17 states that sued to expand access.
Excerpt: A recent poll found that there is widespread confusion about the legality of medication abortion.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/a-guide-to-abortion-laws-by-state
( Women are always fighting for our rights, never ends. )
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