One year ago Saturday, the U.S. Supreme Court rescinded a five-decade-old right to abortion, prompting a seismic shift in debates about politics, values, freedom and fairness.
Twenty-five million women of childbearing age now live in states where the law makes abortions harder to get than they were before the ruling.
Decisions about the law are largely in the hands of state lawmakers and courts. Most Republican-led states have restricted abortion. Fourteen ban abortion in most cases at any point in pregnancy. Twenty Democratic-leaning states have protected access to abortion.
Here’s a look at what’s changed since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling.
LAWS HAVE BEEN ENACTED IN 25 STATES TO BAN OR RESTRICT ABORTION ACCESS
Last summer, as women and medical providers began to navigate a landscape without legal protection for abortion, Nancy Davis’ doctors advised her to terminate her pregnancy. The fetus she was carrying had no skull and was expected to die soon after birth.
But doctors in Louisiana, where Davis lived, would not provide the abortion due to a new law banning it throughout pregnancy in most cases.
Davis became one of the women whose stories, told on news sites and network news, in newspapers and blogs, illustrated the shifting ground doctors and their patients tried to navigate.
At the same time, abortion opponents who worked for decades to abolish a practice they see as murder cheered the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling. Anti-abortion groups said the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide was undemocratic because it prevented states from enacting bans.
“The Dobbs decision was a democratic victory for life that generations fought for,” said E.V. Osment, a spokeswoman for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a major anti-abortion group.
While some states scrambled to pass new restrictions, others already had enacted laws that were designed to take effect if the court overturned Roe.
More than 25 million women ages 15 to 44, or about 2 in 5 nationally, now live in states where there are more restrictions on abortion access than there were before Dobbs. More than 5.5 million more live in states where restrictions have been adopted but are on hold pending court challenges. Bans on abortion no later than 12 weeks into pregnancy are on the books in nearly every state in the Southeast — though some are not in effect.
Many laws that make exceptions for medical emergencies do not clearly define those situations. After Davis went public with her challenges last year, Louisiana lawmakers debated whether doctors in the state were right to deny her an abortion under a law that has exceptions for “medically futile” pregnancies and when there’s a substantial risk of death or impairment for the woman. But the Legislature made no changes to clarify the law.
Davis is among a number of women who ended up traveling out of state to have a legal surgical abortion. She got help from a fund that raises money for women to travel for such purposes.
With her fiancé by her side, Davis flew to New York in September, when she was about four months pregnant. The whole experience was heartbreaking, she said.
