What Will the Reversal of Roe v. Wade Really Mean? Five False Expectations

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% : So, for pro-life advocates, the initial excitement over the demise of Roe v. Wade is likely to give way to disappointment when they discover that the end of Roe does not mean the end of legal pregnancy terminations in the United States.
59% : Unfortunately for pro-life advocates, the probable answer is not very many.
46% : The country is deeply divided on abortion, and that divide now falls largely on partisan lines that reflect deep regional polarizations.
45% : Indeed, it may even be true that reproductive rights advocates' efforts to help women in restrictive states access abortion services might make abortion easier to obtain for many women than it is today.
44% : Ironically, the pro-life movement's effort to overturn Roe v. Wade appears to be resulting in a backlash that will make it easier than ever for some women to obtain abortions - and the rapid expansion of abortion services in places such as California and New York might be enough to offset whatever small reductions in the national abortion rate would have otherwise occurred through bans on abortion in conservative states.
43% : None of the states in question provide Medicaid funding for elective abortions, and several restrict private insurance plans from covering abortion.
42% : And in all of the "trigger law" states that are set to ban abortion this summer, Republicans are so deeply ensconced in power that it's difficult to imagine a Democratic upset under any conditions.
41% : Abortion will be prohibited in some states while being fully funded through Medicaid in others.
41% : First, as I noted above, the states that are likely to prohibit abortion already have very low abortion rates.
40% : Won't additional states ban abortion in the months following the Supreme Court's ruling?
40% : So, although abortion will not be illegal in Alabama, Georgia, or Ohio at the beginning of July, abortion restrictions that were passed in 2019 could go into effect in those states at some point later this year, depending on how quickly the courts rule.
40% : The states that will likely ban abortion in the near future are the states that already have very few abortion clinics and very low abortion rates.
40% : If we're surprised by that outcome, maybe it's because we've forgotten how deep the regional divisions on abortion already were in the United States.
39% : Many media outlets, following the Guttmacher Institute's lead, have predicted that "26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion without Roe."
39% : Similar legal fights may occur in several other states, including Georgia and Ohio, which passed "Heartbeat Bills" in 2019 banning abortion after six weeks.
39% : If Florida decides to pass a more sweeping abortion ban or if a few swing states (such as Pennsylvania or Wisconsin) decide to restrict abortion, the number of abortion providers who are affected will be substantially greater, but most likely, these things won't happen.
39% : While Republicans may suffer for this in a few swing states, current polling suggests that in most areas of the country, Republican incumbents will not face a backlash from voters for their party's actions on abortion.
39% : The reason why the end of Roe is not likely to result in the anti-Republican backlash that some Democrats anticipate is that nearly every state policy on abortion that is likely to be enacted after Roe conforms very closely to existing abortion policy in that state.
39% : Conservative states with larger numbers of abortion clinics (such as Florida) are not scheduled to ban abortion this year.
38% :Thirteen states have "trigger laws" that will automatically cause near-total bans on abortion to go into effect within weeks of the time when Roe v. Wade is reversed.
37% : If a national ban on abortion is ever passed, it will only be in a political climate that is currently unimaginable.
37% : So, the end of Roe v. Wade will serve as a long-term acknowledgement that we as a country have not been able to agree on abortion.
36% : In actual fact, a projection of an 11 percent decline in the number of abortion providers is probably overly optimistic, because some of the states with the most liberal abortion policies are preparing to expand abortion services, and if they do, the new abortion clinics will offset some of the declines in the states that make abortion illegal.
36% : We will therefore have to settle for a non-settlement of the issue - a non-settlement that affirms that abortion cannot be considered a constitutional right, but neither can the right to life for the unborn.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.