the station with medication abortion,”
says Jill Adams, executive director of If/
When/How, a reproductive justice legal
advocacy group. “There’s no going back.”
Of course, it’s not obvious what the
high court’s conservative majority will
do when it encounters one of the new
anti-abortion laws designed to trigger
a constitutional review. Perhaps most
likely, as happened in 1992, when abor-
tion rights advocates felt certain the court
would deal abortion rights a death blow,
the justices will diminish Roe’s stand-
ing without altogether undoing it. As
some legal scholars have speculated, Chief
Justice John Roberts, now considered the
crucial swing vote in such a case, may side
with precedent to preserve his legacy.
But there’s always the possibility that, as
Trump promised his new justices would
do, the court will completely overturn Roe.
Whatever happens, women will once
again be the collateral damage. The law-
makers who backed Alabama’s abortion
ban made that clear: The only repro-
ductive domain they seek to regulate
is a woman’s uterus. While discussing
whether his bill would apply to embryos
discarded during in vitro fertilization,
state Sen. Clyde Chambliss said it would
not, because “the egg in the lab doesn’t
apply. It’s not in a woman.” On the de-
cision to omit exceptions for rape from
the bill’s language, Chambliss said,
“When God creates the miracle of life
inside a woman’s womb, it is not our
place as human beings to extinguish
that life.” At the time, Alabama was one
of two states that had no law providing
for the termination of rapists’ parental
rights over children conceived through
sexual assault.As long as abortion opponents see
Trump and the Supreme Court as their
biggest opportunity in a generation, the
access gap will only widen. States in the
South and Midwest will continue to make
abortions all but impossible, and others,
following the lead of places like Illinois,
New York, and California, will become
sanctuaries. These divides will reinforce
existing inequalities in who can end
their pregnancies: If you have the means
to travel out of state, you won’t need to
worry; if you don’t, you will have to navi-
gate the network of abortion funds or go
underground. The only silver lining of the
slow-burning attack on abortion is that
providers and advocates have had years to
prepare their defenses. “We were built for
this moment,” Sherman, of the National
Network of Abortion Funds, says. “That
doesn’t mean we aren’t scared shitless.” QSTATE ABORTION LAWS
12 states enacted abortion bans in the first half of 2019.
6 states protected or expanded abortion access.
WOMEN 15–44 LIVING IN
A COUNTY WITHOUT AN
ABORTION CLINIC
In 2019, governors in these six states
signed strict new abortion bans.8 or fewer weeks
of gestation: 65%14–15 weeks of
gestation: 4%18–20 weeks of
gestation: 2%16–17 weeks of
gestation: 2%21 or more weeks
of gestation: 1%9–13 weeks of
gestation: 26%Fewest
protections
for abortion
rightsMost
protections
for abortion
rightsMissouri
94%Mississippi
91%Georgia
58%Louisiana
63%Ohio
56%Alabama
59%Sources: Guttmacher Institute, cdcUS Average
39%