We Aborted Roe vs. Wade! What’s Next?

The pro-life movement may have won this particular battle, but we have yet to win the war.

In a landmark (or the undoing of a landmark) decision, the United States Supreme Court overturned the 1973 “Roe vs. Wade” decision on Friday, thereby ending the fictional “constitutional right” to an abortion.

“We end this opinion where we began. Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court's opinion.

This is undoubtedly a victory for the pro-life movement. A pro-life movement who have been determined in response to the murder of 63 million unborn babies since 1973 — an unimaginable number that dwarves the modern day population of California and New York combined.

But what does this decision mean?

Well, power over abortion legislation will now be handed back to individual states — as was the case prior to Roe vs. Wade. While at least 13 states in the nation have “trigger laws” which will quickly move to ban abortion outright (Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming), and five further states have existing abortion bans that will go back into effect (Alabama, Arizona, Michigan, West Virginia and Wisconsin), there are numerous states which will either continue to protect abortion in some form, or expand so-called “abortion access.”

Abortion will likely continue to be legal in 20 states (Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington) as well as Washington, D.C., with some states looking to continue the expansion of access (including California, Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts).

Currently, no “gestational limit” is placed upon abortions by Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, Washington, D.C., New Jersey, Oregon, or Vermont. Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Rhode Island, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, and Washington all use the subjective limit of “viability,” while Massachusetts and New Hampshire use 24 weeks as their limit, at which point the unborn baby has finger and toe prints, the ability to hiccup and — most disturbingly of all — the ability to feel pain. Oh, and the ability to survive outside the womb too, but who’s counting?

Throughout these twenty states and the nation’s capital, a staggering number of abortions are carried out each year. In 2020 alone:

• California: 154,060 abortions in 2020 (26.9% of pregnancies).

• New York: 110,360 abortions in 2020 (34.5% of pregnancies).

• Illinois: 52,780 abortions in 2020 (28.4% of pregnancies).