As Roe v Wade marks 50 years, what’s changed since the landmark abortion decision was overturned?
Today marks 50 years since Roe v Wade, America’s landmark Supreme Court decision that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right.
Roe v Wade was overturned last June, giving the power to decide on abortion rights to 50 states to determine individually.
It triggered a wave of change. Abortion bans were brought in, court cases mounted, clinics closed. Here is what has happened in the seven months since US abortion rights were overturned.
First off, what is Roe v Wade?
Roe v Wade refers to the 1973 Supreme Court case that said the government could not prohibit abortions because the constitutional right to liberty includes the right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy.
Roe refers to Texan woman Norma McCorvey – known by the pseudonym Jane Roe – who challenged the state’s abortion laws after she couldn’t get a termination in 1969 because her life was not in danger. Wade is district attorney Henry Wade, who defended the anti-abortion laws.
The court decision meant every woman in the US had the right to an abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Another ruling – Planned Parenthood v Casey in 1982 – built on that by saying states could not have laws that create a “substantial obstacle” to a woman seeking an abortion up to 24 weeks.
States ban abortion
In 12 states, there are now near-total bans on abortion. In five of these states, the ban is being challenged in court but remains in effect.
The 12 states are: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.
Two further states – North Dakota and Wisconsin – do not have bans in place but abortions are unavailable because clinics have closed.
Georgia has banned abortions past six weeks of pregnancy, severely limiting access to terminations because so many women do not find out they are pregnant – and have time to organise the procedure – before the six-week mark.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, which specialises in reproductive health, these 15 states are home to almost 22 million women aged 15 to 49. That means almost a third of America’s women of reproductive age are living in states where abortion is either unavailable or severely restricted.
More states could follow
A further nine states have introduced restrictions to abortion that would have been unconstitutional under Roe v Wade, have bans currently blocked by the court or are likely to introduce bans in the near future.
Arizona and Florida do not allow abortions past 15 weeks, while Utah has an 18-week ban.
In three states – Indiana, Wyoming and Ohio – near-total or early-gestation bans have been blocked by state courts for now, but lawmakers have indicated they intend to fight them.
In Iowa, Montana and Nebraska, anti-abortion policymakers have indicated that they want to ban abortion soon, but abortion care remains available for now.
What’s happened to abortion clinics?
At least 66 abortion clinics have stopped offering abortion care in the 15 states where abortion is banned or severely restricted.
The loss of these clinics is felt nationwide, according to the Guttmacher Institute, as clinics in states where abortion remains legal are inundated with people travelling interstate.
As the institute explains: “These dramatic increases in caseloads mean clinic capacity and staff are stretched to their limits, resulting in longer wait times for appointments even for residents of states where abortion remains legal.”
A study from the Society of Family Planning estimated legal abortions nationwide fell by more than 10,000 in the two months following the overturning of Roe v Wade, although some women may have sought abortion pills privately.
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Abortion revolution in the US
Exacerbating inequality
Many of the states that have banned or restricted abortion have high proportions of black, Latina and indigenous women.
Research by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed how overturning Roe v Wade disproportionately impacts women of colour, as they are more likely to get abortions, have more limited access to health care, and face barriers to travelling out of state for an abortion.
The Guttmacher Institute notes in addition that “people living with low incomes… transmen and nonbinary people, immigrants, adolescents and people living with disabilities are all particularly likely to encounter compounding obstacles to abortion care and be harmed as a result”.
Some states have introduced protections
While the US has seen significant rolling back of abortion rights, there are pockets of good news for pro-choice activists.
Voters in Kansas protected abortion rights in the state’s constitution by rejecting an amendment that would have allowed lawmakers to restrict access to abortions.
New York will provide free abortion pills at four public clinics, making its health department the first in the nation to offer free medication abortion.
In the midterms, voters in five states chose to protect reproductive rights. Vermont, Michigan and California added protections to their state constitutions while voters in Kentucky rejected an amendment that would have removed any protection for abortion rights from the constitution.
In Montana, a bill that could have criminalised doctors for providing abortions was defeated.
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Medical abortions
Medical abortions account for the majority of abortions in the US – in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, abortion pills were used in 53% of cases.
Early evidence suggests they have become even more popular since Roe v Wade was overturned – one study suggested the number of people seeking medical abortions has increased threefold.
At the beginning of January, the Food and Drug Administration changed its rules to allow retail pharmacies in the US to dispense abortion pills for the first time.
However, abortion pills are now seen as the next frontier in the fight by anti-abortion activists and they are pushing hard to curtail access.
On the grass outside the university library, it is as though it never happened.
The tents have been removed. The pavements have been sprayed. The graffiti removed.
Order and control have been restored. The protest has been silenced. For now at least.
A few streets away, at the university police station, an officer calls the names of the students arrested the night before.
On the steps in front of him, the bedraggled are waiting.
Pic: Reuters
Police clash with pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the UCLA campus early on Thursday morning. Pic: AP
Students, charged and released with a date in court, are here now to collect their belongings. They’re missing bags, belts, shoes, all lost in the chaos of the night before.
From the very heart of the protest encampment, our cameras had captured the chaos.
Officers moving in. Tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse. Stun grenades to disorientate.
Police detain a demonstrator, as they clear out the protest encampment in UCLA.
Pic: Reuters
They were scenes which have stirred an already fevered debate about Israel and Gaza, yes, but about much more too. About America, about policing, and about free speech too.
President Biden said yesterday: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest.”
‘Wrong’ say the protesters. Their movement, they say, is the very essence of protest; of civil disobedience which is threaded through US college campus history.
Law enforcement official moves a tent at the protest encampment in support of Palestinians at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
Signs of the days-long protest on campus being gradually cleared.
They reject any notion that they are threatening or violent. Yet the deeply divisive history of the Israel-Palestine conflict ensures that the beholder will so often be offended by the actions of the other side.
It was the students perceived antisemitism through their pro-Palestinian slogans which had drawn a group of pro-Israel protesters to the encampment earlier in the week.
The chaos of that night was reflected in a statement by the university’s student radio station which has been covering every twist.
This embrace turned out to be a thread of history
“Counter protestors used bear mace, professional-grade fireworks and clubs to brutalize hundreds of our peers, UCLA turned a blind eye. Police were not called until hours into the onslaught and stood aside for over an hour as counter-protestors enacted racial, physical and chemical violence,” the statement from the UCLA Radio Managerial team said.
Watching the clear-up after the nighttime police sweep of the protesters I spotted two people embracing. A young man and an older woman.
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Professor recalls violent arrest at protest
It turned out to be a thread of history. One was a student who’d been arrested the night before.
The other was a student from a past time. Diane Salinger had been at New York’s Columbia University in 1968, at protests which now form a key chapter in American history.
Diane Salinger had been at New York’s Columbia University in 1968, at protests which now form a key chapter in American history
“I’m so proud of these people here. I’m so proud,” she told me.
“You know the civil unrest of the students back in ’68 and it continued for several years, it actually changed the course of the Vietnam War and hopefully this is going to do the same thing.”
But then, back at the police station, a conversation that hints at the wider challenges for America.
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‘Tom’ is a protester who wanted to remain anonymous – a graduate who feels politically deserted in his own country. For him, no government is better than any on offer.
‘Tom’ is a protester who wanted to remain anonymous – a graduate who feels politically deserted in his own country.
“The problem with our system is that we can’t rely on the police, we can’t rely on the military to keep us safe.
“When we need to make our voices heard, we need to make them heard, and the only way to do that without being repressed is by keeping each other safe and I think that last night and the last few months have really exemplified that,” he told me.
These protests are about more than Gaza. They are aligning a spectrum of dissent.
A scuba dive boat captain has been jailed for four years for criminal negligence over a fire that killed 34 people.
Captain Jerry Boylan was also sentenced to three years supervised release by a federal judge in Los Angeles, California.
The blaze on the vessel named Conception in September 2019 was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent American history.
Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer last year.
Captain Jerry Boylan. Pic: AP
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Boylan – who is appealing – wrote: “While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no dispute that Mr Boylan did not intend for anyone to die.
“Indeed, Mr Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse, and trauma as a result of the deaths of his passengers and crew.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day voyage, sinking less than 30 metres from the shore.
Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped below deck.
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The victims included an environmental scientist, a Singaporean data scientist and a family of three sisters, their father and his wife.
Boylan jumped overboard, and four crew members who followed suit also survived.
The burned hull of the dive boat. Pic: AP
Boylan initially faced 34 counts of seaman’s manslaughter, meaning he could have faced a total of 340 years behind bars.
His lawyers argued the deaths were the result of a single incident and not separate crimes, so prosecutors instead charged Boylan with only one count.
While the criminal case has concluded, there are several ongoing lawsuits.
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