What an America Without Roe Would Look Like

The Supreme Court, expected to rule in June, may refrain from overthrowing Roe or compromise on protecting early pregnancy abortions. But many legal experts who followed the oral arguments say Roe is likely to be significantly weakened.

In states with bans, women who cannot travel easily would be most affected. They are disproportionately poor, blacks, Latinas, teenagers, uninsured and undocumented immigrants.

“The most vulnerable are being left behind and forced to carry pregnancies they weren’t prepared for,” said Tammi Kromenaker, director of Red River Women’s Clinic, the only abortion provider in North Dakota to trigger abortion illegal without roe.

Understand the momentous concept of the Supreme Court

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Mississippi Abortion Act. The court heard arguments in a challenge to a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks. The case could lead to the end of Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

New York Gun Act. The judges will examine the constitutionality of a long-standing New York law that severely restricts the carrying of guns in public. The court has not issued a major ruling under the second amendment in more than a decade.

A decline in public support. Chief Justice Roberts now heads a court that is increasingly being associated with partiality. Recent polls show that following a spate of unusual late summer judgments in politically charged cases, the court is suffering a sharp drop in public support.

As some states tightened abortion restrictions in recent years, more and more organizations have helped women book and pay for flights or gasoline, hotels, and childcare. But their leaders say they don’t have the financial or human capacity to help the number of women in the South and Midwest who would need it if Roe fell.

One such group, Fund Texas Choice, received about 35 calls a month before Texas banned most abortions in September and was able to help almost anyone who called. Since then, there have been up to 300 callers a month, half of them had to be rejected, said Anna Rupani, the group’s managing director. Seventy percent of customers are colored and 60 percent are parents.

“It will absolutely not be sustainable if Roe is knocked over,” she said.

Many of the states that would ban abortion also have the lowest levels of social support for women and children, such as solid access to family planning services or paid family vacations, and are high in child poverty. Studies have shown that denial of abortion has economic effects that have spanned the past few years.

Some anti-abortionists say the next step is to create a bigger safety net for poor mothers. “There has never been enough alternative help for women,” says Chuck Donovan, who has worked in the anti-abortion movement for decades and is now president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute. “This is something that pro-lifers could agree to, even if it frustrates the conservatives.”