For nearly 50 years, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the fundamental right to privacy through its 1973 landmark decision in Roe v. Wade and affirmed an individual’s right to safe and legal abortion. On June 24, 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett denied that critical right to bodily autonomy, overturning Roe and allowing numerous cruel and restrictive abortion bans across the United States to take effect.
Now, more than half of states have already banned or are poised to ban abortion, which would leave 34 million women of reproductive age facing the loss of their reproductive freedoms. Furthermore, many states advancing abortion restrictions are heavily concentrated in the southeast and central United States, where a significant proportion of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color live—who are disproportionately more likely to need abortion care— further interrupting essential and lifesaving care.
The above excerpt was originally published in Center for American Progress.
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