New laws banning abortion are are scheduled to take effect Thursday in four states – Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas – two months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion.
A ban in another state, North Dakota, was scheduled to take effect Friday, but a state judge Thursday delayed that until a legal challenge to the ban could be considered.
What is happening and why? All but the Oklahoma legislation are the result of so-called “trigger” laws, bills approved in the past to ban abortion that would take effect – i.e., be triggered – only if the Supreme Court overturned Roe and gave states the power to severely limit or even outlaw the procedure.
How many states have bans? Are more bans coming? Thirteen states have trigger bans that have taken effect, are scheduled to or are being reviewed by the courts. They already have taken effect in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and South Dakota. Without Roe, some project as many as 26 states will restrict or ban abortion at some point short of viability.
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What states are banning abortion and when?
The laws going into effect this week basically amount to a near-total ban on abortion.
The Texas law, passed in 2019, bans the procedure after fertilization except in cases of life-threatening or severe health conditions.
Tennessee’s trigger ban was also approved in 2019. It similarly would ban all abortions, except in the case of severe or life-threatening health conditions for the patient.
Idaho’s legislation, passed in 2020, bans abortion and makes anyone who performs an abortion subject to a felony punishable by two-to-five years in prison. Much of the law will take effect Thursday, but a U.S. district court judge Wednesday stopped the state from prosecuting anyone performing an abortion in a medical emergency until a legal challenge is decided.
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In North Dakota, a judge Thursday temporarily stopped an abortion ban from taking effect Friday, according to the Associated Press. Burleigh County District Judge Bruce Romanick said he wanted more time to make a proper judgment in a egal challenge to the ban, enacted in 2007, by Red River Women’s Clinic. That clinic had been North Dakota’s sole abortion provider until it moved across the state border to Minnesota earlier this month.
Oklahoma’s ban, passed last year, is not a trigger law, but supersedes one that already was in effect. It calls for up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine for performing an abortion.
What do these new laws change?
In Texas and Oklahoma, the new laws won’t really change what’s happening, since both states already are blocking abortions, according to Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research and policy organization that supports abortion rights.
In other states, the trigger laws are more restrictive than existing laws on the books, often cutting or eliminating the amount of time a person has to get the procedure and increasing civil and criminal penalties for performing one.
“The status quo in these states already is that there is virtually no access to abortion,” said Olivia Cappello, a press officer for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a nonprofit that provides reproductive health care, including abortion services.
In Tennessee, a law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, which took effect four days after the Supreme Court’s ruling, will be replaced by a stricter ban that offers no time window to have the procedure. In Idaho, a new law, which bans abortion at fertilization, will replace one that outlawed the procedure after six weeks.
This week’s trigger laws constitute “a major step in reshaping abortion access in the country,” Nash said. “You can start seeing the map get filled in on these two days. The number of clinics will be shrinking.”
The National Right to Life Committee, an anti-abortion advocacy group, said in a statement that the new laws “will save the lives of thousands of children” and will continue to “allow abortion to protect the life of the mother as well as her health when there is a serious threat.”
Planned Parenthood spokesperson Abby Ledoux disagreed, saying increased civil and criminal penalties and unclear statutory language are leaving many medical professionals concerned about the consequences of providing emergency medical care.
What are trigger laws and why are they taking effect now?
Over the past two decades, a number of Republican-led state legislatures have passed laws banning abortion that could take effect only if Roe were overturned. Most of those states also have other legislation restricting abortion, although the trigger bans are generally more comprehensive.
Many of the trigger laws required a certain amount of time to pass between the recording of the Supreme Court judgment, which generally happens about a month after the opinion, and the date the ban would take effect. In Texas, that was 30 days, resulting in the two-month gap between opinion announcement and the implementation of the trigger ban.
The Oklahoma legislation, introduced in 2021, initially was supposed to go into effect last November, Nash said. An amended version approved in April changed that date to Aug. 25.
What is the status of other abortion restrictions?
In addition to trigger laws, some states have decades-old bans that potentially could take effect after Roe’s reversal.
A Michigan judge late last week temporarily prohibited county prosecutors from filing felony charges against abortion providers under a 1931 ban. Petitioners are seeking to get a reproductive freedom amendment that would protect abortion rights on the state ballot.
In the immediate aftermath of the Roe decision, the Texas attorney general argued that abortion providers could be criminally charged based on a 1925 ban. Courts are considering suits related to pre-Roe bans in Arizona, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Without Roe, Guttmacher projects as many as 26 states will restrict or ban abortion at some point short of viability. To date, 14 states restrict abortion to 15 weeks of pregnancy – the limit in the Mississippi law at the center of the court case that led to Roe’s reversal – or fewer, including nine with total bans, save for narrow exceptions.
Contributing: Associated Press