Outrage, Uncertainty, and Instant Abortion Bans After Supreme Court Overturns

The Supreme Court decision ending abortion access for millions of Americans did not come as a surprise . But having a leaked preview of Samuel Alito's majority opinion in advance has not dulled the outrage over the end of Roe v. Wade in America. Immediately after the ruling was announced, protestors began assembling outside the Court to express their fury. Democrats, without immediate recourse, read poems on television . Meanwhile, Republican-controlled states, now given by a green light by the Court, began moving forward with immediate bans restricting access to abortion. Below are updates on the ongoing fallout from the most consequential Supreme Court decision in decades.

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Abortion funds have raised more than $3 million since the ruling was announced

Local organizations that support people seeking abortions have collectively raised more than $3 million since the Supreme Court announced the end of Roe v. Wade on Friday morning. The New York Times reports that the National Network of Abortion Funds, comprising some 97 organizations, had received about 33,000 new donations by Friday afternoon.

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"Find the way to hope, not as feel-good anesthetic but as tactical necessity"

At the Cut, Rebecca Traister warns against despair :

It is no accident that many who believed this came from or moved into classes of power and privilege, where they could remain insulated from the erosions that have been grinding away this whole time, right under their noses. This stubborn belief in a kind of Forever Progress — the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, etc. — has undergirded a political message that there was nothing to worry about. It has prevented a proper understanding of this country's history and its foundational power imbalances. And now it is the shattering of this belief that pulls people toward despair.

But despair is poison. It deadens people when the most important thing they can do is proceed with more drive and force and openness than they have before. Which is why the work ahead is insisting on hope, behaving as if there is reason for hope, even if you feel , based on the ample available evidence, that there is not.

Read the rest of Traister's response to the end of Roe v. Wade here .

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More large employers are announcing they will cover abortion costs in restricted states

In what looks like a new corporate commitment for many large businesses operating in more than one state, numerous employers are announcing that they will pay into the thousands to help their staff in states with abortion bans to travel to seek care in legal states.

Disney, at the front lines of a culture war with Florida Governor Ron Desantis, said in an i nternal memo that it will cover travel expenses for out-of-state abortions. Beginning in July, JPMorgan Chase employees will receive benefits covering health-care services "that can only be obtained far from your home, which would include legal abortion," according to a company Q+A. One of the most generous funds comes from Dick's Sporting Goods, whose CEO announced on LinkedIn that the company will "provide up to $4,000 in travel expense reimbursement to travel to the nearest location where that care is legally available," a benefit that is also extended toward dependents and spouses. Prior to the decision, companies including Netflix, Patagonia, Comcast, DoorDash, PayPal, and Paramount told employees travel costs would be covered for out-of-state abortions.

Patagonia added another novel benefit on Friday: it is now offering to provide bail money for any employee who is arrested at an abortion protest.

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The Court's dissenting justices offered a reality check

Writes Irin Carmon :

When the majority opinion authoritatively tells us not to believe what is happening in front of our own eyes (or what will happen next as a result of its decision), when it sets terms that erase the impact on actual people's lives — it helps to have something in black and white that says to the public, You are not crazy. This is what the 66-page dissent by Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan does. ….

If the test that the majority opinion constructs for whether abortion can be banned in half the states — whether it is rooted in the tradition of the 14th Amendment — strikes you as a rigged game, you are not alone. The dissenters, in unusually damning language, bury originalism. "Those responsible for the original Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment, did not perceive women as equals, and did not recognize women's rights," they write. "When the majority says that we must read our foundational charter as viewed at the time of ratification (except that we may also check it against the Dark Ages), it consigns women to second-class citizenship."

Read the rest of Carmon's analysis of the dissent here .

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New York lawmakers vow to continue the fight

Politicians across New York state have begun to weigh in on the momentous decision . "It is a day, a dark day for women across this nation who have long fought for the right to have control over their own bodies," Governor Kathy Hochul said , calling the decision "repulsive at every level." She added that it's a fight her grandmother and mother's generations had to wage, and one the generation of her new granddaughter, born this may, will probably need to continue.

Not long after the announcement, the governor and the state health department announced a public education initiative that will inform New Yorkers and visitors to the state about their abortion rights in New York. The campaign will launch in radio and digital ads, but also in high-traffic areas like airports, shopping centers, and transit hubs.

Mayor Eric Adams spoke in front of City Hall Friday, calling today "one of the darkest periods of our country," and describing the Supreme Court's decision as "the erosion and destruction of the ability of women to have and be empowered." Adams said that "New York will be the safe haven for America and for the women of this country," and will be open to any woman across the nation who might have to leave their home city or state to seek abortion care.

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Attorney General Garland says states can't ban FDA-approved abortion pills

Garland said in a statement on Friday that the Department of Justice will protect providers and patients in states which will not restrict abortion and will work with the Food and Drug Administration to maintain access to medications like Mifepristone for medical abortions. "States may not ban mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA's expert judgment about its safety and efficacy," he said. In December, the FDA lifted a restriction on the abortion pill, which allowed doctors to prescribe online and send to patients by mail.

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The Christian right's power finally becomes real

Jonathan Chait warns :

The long era in which social-conservative ambitions were funneled into judicial appointments was also one in which social liberalism seemed to be enjoying an unstoppable march. … But now, social conservatives perceive the opportunity to roll back the liberalizing tide and bear the confidence of a movement that sees its time has come. It is possible they will use this power to navigate a prudent Burkean course, but this would be wildly out of character with the nature of a movement that long ago gave itself over completely to fanaticism and absolutism.

Read the rest of Chait's response here .

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Trigger laws immediately end access to abortion in four states with many more soon to come

So-called trigger laws — state-level abortion restrictions designed to go into effect as soon as Roe was overturned — have now banned abortion access in Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri, and South Dakota. Arkansas quickly joined the list later Friday. And Idaho, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming have bans that are expected to go into effect within 30 days. Oklahoma and Texas already had bans in effect. Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, South Carolina, and West Virginia are expected to implement abortion bans in the coming months.

On Friday, Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin also asked four Republican lawmakers to write legislation to ban abortion in the state.

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Biden: "The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk"

President Joe Biden responded to the Supreme Court's decision in a White House address, calling it a "sad day" for both the institution and for the nation. "Now, with Roe gone, let's be very clear: The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk," he said.

Biden placed the blame squarely at the feet of the court's conservative wing, particularly on Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, who were appointed and confirmed by his predecessor: "It's the realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court, in my view," Biden said. "The Court has done what it has never done before: expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans that it had already been recognized."

Biden said his administration will fight to protect the "bedrock right" of a woman to travel outside of her state to receive abortion care and to receive medication through the mail to end a pregnancy. But he made it clear there was still much more to do. "The only way we can secure a woman's right to choose, the balance that existed, is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade as federal law. No executive action from the president can do that," Biden said.

The president reemphasized the importance of voting, urging Americans to vote this fall to elect politicians on the local and federal level who would support codifying Roe. "We need to restore the protections of Roe as law of the land. We need to elect officials who will do that. This fall, Roe is on the ballot," he said. He stressed that protests against the decision should remain peaceful:

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Police in riot gear rush to the Supreme Court, where demonstrations over the ruling are already underway

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Trump wants the credit for the ruling; Pence calls for national abortion ban

The former president, as expected, made the Supreme Court decision about himself. In a statement, he described the six-to-three ruling as the biggest "WIN for LIFE in a generation," which was "only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court."

However, the New York Times reports that Trump has been privately saying for weeks that the decision will be "bad for Republicans."

Speaking with Breitbart News on Friday, former vice-president Mike Pence celebrated Roe v. Wade being "consigned to the ash heap of history" and made a call to arms: "Having been given this second chance for Life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land," he said in a statement.

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The compounded health risk for American women

At the Cut, Claire Lampen gives an overview of the increased mortality risk now being forced on women:

It's impossible to tell just how many people died because of botched abortions pre- Roe , though the WHO estimates that 4.7 to 13.2 percent of the world's current maternal deaths result from unsafe abortions. Domestically, multiple studies show that the more restrictions on abortion a state enacts, the higher its maternal- and infant-mortality rates tend to be. (Mississippi, incidentally, has the highest infant-mortality rate in the country.) That's not necessarily because people are seeking out unsafe avenues to end their pregnancies; more likely, it's because their state governments balk at subsidizing reproductive health care in all its forms. According to Pew Research , about a quarter of annual maternal deaths occur six weeks to a year after pregnancy ends — but in Mississippi, the legislators advocating for forced birth are the same ones who repeatedly refuse to extend Medicaid coverage to postpartum care, while targeting the contraceptives that help keep unwanted pregnancy rates low in the first place.

Read the rest of Lampen's piece here .

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Regrets: Susan Collins may have a few

The pro-choice senator, who voted to confirm Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, claims they misled her on Roe v. Wade :

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Clarence Thomas argues same-sex marriage isn't safe either

In his concurring opinion, Thomas wrote that "in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold , Lawrence , and Obergefell ." As Ed Kilgore explains , Thomas wants to consider these landmark decisions — which protect access to contraception, same-sex relationships, and same-sex marriage — relying on similar constitutional foundations to that of Roe :

All three cases depended, to some degree, on the doctrine that the 14th Amendment's due-process clause was not simply procedural but conferred some 'substantive' rights. Thomas is calling for the conservative counterrevolution now raging due to the brazen dismissal of precedents in Dobbs to proceed to the next logical targets.

Read the rest of his analysis of Thomas's opinion here .

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Pelosi says she is "personally overwhelmed" by the decision — then reads a poem

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The liberal dissent: "A woman has no rights"

As Nia Prater notes , the three liberals on the court, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, issued a joint dissent arguing against the end of Roe :

They wrote that the court had long held a balance between the many differing opinions of Americans on abortion, issuing a variety of decisions that allowed some limits to be set on the procedure but not allowing an undue burden to be placed upon a woman who might seek it. "Today, the Court discards that balance. It says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of," the justices wrote.

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A treacherous new landscape nationwide

Irin Carmon explains in her post on the ruling:

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 16 states are now "certain or likely" to ban abortion. In 13 states , this is expected to be automatic, through "trigger bans" designed to ban nearly all abortions if Roe were overturned. In Oklahoma, such a ban is already being observed; since last September, the Supreme Court has allowed Texas to ban most abortions, starting at around six weeks. Many of these states border one another, creating vast deserts of reproductive freedom across the South and Midwest, where, at minimum, providers will be criminalized and anyone who can become pregnant will be instantly stripped of their rights. Blue states, mainly on the coasts, are already preparing to become abortion oases, while the decision sets up titanic battles in purple states, especially ones with divided state governments.

Read the rest of Carmon's analysis of the ruling here .

This post will be updated continuously to reflect new developments.

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