Nobody knows when the United States Supreme Court will hand down its decision on abortion rights, but when it does, it is likely to cause a storm. Based on the decisions made by the majority conservative court in the past, it is possible that the federal abortion protections currently guaranteed under Roe v. Wade will be severely diminished or even outright overturned.
In case the court would allow states to end all abortions, half of U.S. states are expected to do just that. According to the Guttmacher Institute and the Pew Charitable Trust, abortions would be banned in many states across the South, Midwest and Western United States upon such a decision.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, this would severely limit abortion coverage for women in these areas. The next provider would be more than 200 miles driving distance away in Michigan and Georgia, more than 300 miles away in Montana and Alabama, more than 500 miles away in Texas and Florida and more than 600 miles away in Louisiana in case of the Supreme Court overturning the precedent.
In many Northeastern states and West Coast states, abortion rights are protected by state laws. Some states are currently scrambling to codify abortion rights, for example Vermont. Additionally, states like Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania are not expected to end abortions upon the Supreme Court decision despite a lack of state laws.
The case the court is hearing at the moment centers around a Mississippi abortion law that outlaws abortions after 15 weeks. As part of Roe v. Wade and later Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court has established fetal viability as a standard for when abortions can be performed. This had previously set the precedent for states allowing abortions up until 22 to 26 weeks of gestational age, which is when a fetus becomes viable outside the womb. Alternatively, states have simply cited viability as a rule – a fact that the Mississippi law is now challenging.
Another possible outcome of the Supreme Court ruling could be that abortion rights will be upheld but the viability standard will fall. This would allow states to set shorter time limits on the procedure. In that case, the same states that would ban abortions can be expected to shorten the time in which an abortion is possible. A recent Texas law has set the cutoff at just six weeks of gestation, which is an example of how drastically some states want to limit abortion time frames. For now, the Texas law has an unprecedented setup, calling on citizens to enforce it, but such a workaround would become unnecessary should the Supreme Court decide to undermine Roe v. Wade.
The Mississippi law actually comes closer to abortion limits set in most European countries (at 14 weeks of gestational age or the end of the first trimester), while the Texas law is far from international standards. Six weeks of gestation equal just four weeks of pregnancy and just three weeks after a missed period.
This chart shows U.S. states by expected reaction to Roe v. Wade being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
