by Robin Roenker
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization stripped away constitutional protections for abortion, a medical procedure to intentionally end a pregnancy. The Dobbs decision overturned the Court’s ruling in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case, which had made abortion legal across all 50 states.
To be clear, the Court’s decision in Dobbs did not make abortion illegal. It simply left the legality of the procedure up to the individual states. Thirteen states had “trigger laws” prepared so that if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, laws that either banned the procedure outright or restricted abortion would automatically be put in place.
The result in the aftermath of the Court’s Dobb’s decision, has been a hodgepodge of differing rules and restrictions regarding whether—or in what cases—abortion is allowed across the nation, with many of these rulings continually shifting as they are challenged in court.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading source of U.S. health policy information, as of June 2025, 12 U.S. states have banned abortion entirely; six states restrict abortions past 12 weeks of gestation, which refers to the time of development within the womb; four states prohibit abortion past 22 weeks gestation; and 19 states outlaw abortion after the point at which the fetus is viable on its own, usually defined as around 23 or 24 weeks gestation.
In the District of Columbia and nine U.S. states—including New Jersey—abortion is legal without gestational limits. New Jersey’s Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act, signed into law in January 2022, ahead of the Court’s Dobbs decision, eliminated restrictions on abortion procedures and established abortion as a fundamental right under the state constitution, protecting access at any point during pregnancy.
Within almost every U.S. state, the issue of abortion access remains volatile. Abortion rights advocates, who believe a woman should have the right to choose whether to keep or terminate a pregnancy, and pro-life advocates, who argue that life should be protected, wage court challenges to nearly every new law that advances the other group’s agenda.
“In some cases, we’re sort of watching the state laws shift, not every day necessarily, but frequently,” says Kimberly Mutcherson, a professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden whose scholarship focuses on reproductive justice, bioethics and family and health law. “As states pass these laws and come up with new abortion policies, they are finding themselves facing challenges in state court or in federal court very quickly.”
Federal case decisions
In the wake of Dobbs, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two federal rulings related to abortion access. In Food and Drug Administration (FDA) v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, decided in June 2024, the Court voted unanimously against the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine’s attempt to block pharmacies and telemedicine providers from issuing Mifepristone, a widely used abortion medication.
Mifepristone is part of a two-drug regimen for medication-induced abortion that was first approved for usage by the FDA in 2000. Medication-induced abortion is now the most commonly used method of abortion in the United States, accounting for more than half of all abortions, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The Court’s decision in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine did not center on the legality or illegality of medical abortion but rather on a procedural issue. Namely, the Court deemed that the plaintiff lacked sufficient legal standing to “bring the case,” meaning they felt that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—a group of anti-abortion doctors and organizations—failed to prove a direct, redressable injury caused by the FDA’s regulatory actions relating to its Mifepristone approval.
As a result, the Court’s ruling reaffirmed Mifepristone’s availability under current FDA rules. However, some states, like Louisiana, are exploring ways to potentially restrict access to Mifepristone by classifying it as a controlled substance—a status that is currently under legal challenge there.
Another key case, Idaho v. United States (consolidated with a similar case called Moyle v. United States) centered on a challenge by the U.S. government (under former President Joseph Biden’s administration) against Idaho’s near-total abortion ban. The case alleged that Idaho’s abortion ban conflicted with federally mandated requirements for medical providers to provide life-saving, emergency care to patients as outlined under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), enacted by Congress in 1986. Plaintiffs in the case argued that Idaho was restricting abortion access, even for women whose medical conditions meant they might die without one, in violation of federal law.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the case in June 2024 for being “improvidently granted,” a term that means the Court made a mistake in taking the case in the first place. One of the reasons for this is that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals never fully ruled on the case before the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear it. The dismissal returned the matter to Idaho’s lower courts. In the meantime, however, there was a change in presidential leadership, and in March 2025, the Trump administration decided to drop the federal challenge to the case entirely.
Professor Mutcherson says there are many questions about abortion care that the U.S. Supreme Court is not answering, and those questions will continue to “bubble up.”
“Maybe you can ban abortion, but are you constitutionally required to have exceptions for life? Are you constitutionally required to have exceptions for health?” Professor Mutcherson asks. “Can a state ban abortion even when there’s a fetal anomaly? Can a state make it illegal for someone to cross state lines to get an abortion? There are so many questions that remain to be sorted out.”
Major state decisions
At the state level, various abortion protections and restrictions since Dobbs have come in the form of new state legislation and/or ballot decisions by constituents. At times, however, these two processes have been in direct conflict with one another, further complicating the abortion access issue.
For example, in November 2024, 51.6% of Missouri voters approved Amendment 3, which called for codifying the right to abortion up until fetal viability into the Missouri State Constitution. That decision directly opposed Missouri’s existing “trigger law,” which created a near-total ban on abortion in the state, effective as of June 2022, following the Dobbs decision. The status of abortion in the state is now in limbo, with some abortion access restored in February 2025, only to be halted again by challenges from lower state courts. The case currently awaits a pending January 2026 Missouri State Supreme Court trial that will, presumably, establish a final resolution between Missouri’s constitutional amendment and the conflicting trigger law.
In all, 10 states voted on ballot measures in 2024 seeking to affirm that the right to abortion is protected under their state’s constitution. Measures protecting abortion rights succeeded in seven states — Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York—but failed in three, Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota. In addition, a ballot measure that prohibited abortions after the first trimester passed in Nebraska.
Is it healthcare?
In Wyoming, the state’s Supreme Court heard oral arguments in April 2025 in the case of Johnson v. Wyoming. The case focuses on the issue of whether abortion care is, by definition, a form of health care. The case was filed as an attempt to block two impending near-total bans on both surgical and medical abortion passed by the Wyoming Legislature.
Specifically, the case references a 2012 Wyoming state constitutional amendment protecting residents’ “health care freedoms.” Abortion rights plaintiffs in the case argue that abortion access is health care and should therefore be protected under the state constitution. The attorney for the state, meanwhile, has argued that elective abortions are not health care, on the basis that they do not treat an illness or medical condition. The state’s position is that the legislature, not the courts, decide when abortion is considered “health care.”
In November 2024, a lower court in Wyoming blocked the abortion bans as unconstitutional, finding that they violated Article 1, Section 38 of its state constitution, which protects an individual’s fundamental right to personal autonomy in medical decisions. The state appealed that decision to the Wyoming Supreme Court. At press time, the Wyoming State Supreme Court had not issued its ruling in the case.
Going forward
As lawsuits surrounding abortion access continue to be waged in the courts, one perhaps surprising truth has emerged: abortion rates have actually slightly risen since Dobbs, according to KFF and an analysis by the Associated Press. In 2024, roughly 1.1 million abortions were performed in the U.S., slightly more than the 1,056,000 performed in 2023. Those numbers are lower than the historic peak of nearly 1.6 million annual abortions charted in the late 1990s.
Discussion Questions
- As the article points out, the laws concerning abortion vary by state—from outright bans to complete access, with differing regulations in between. What do you see as the drawbacks of not having a consistent law regarding abortion? What are the benefits of such a variety of laws? Explain your answer.
- What is your opinion on the Missouri case where a majority of voters called for codifying the right to abortion in the state’s constitution, but the state is fighting against it. Should the will of the voters win out? Why or why not?
Glossary Words
appeal—a request that a higher court review the decision of a lower court.
fetus—offspring that is in the prenatal stage of development.
plaintiff—person or persons bringing a civil lawsuit against another person or entity.
overturned—in the law, to void a prior legal precedent.
redress—satisfaction, in the form of compensation or punishment, for an injury or wrongdoing.
This article originally appeared in the fall 2025 issue of Respect, NJSBF’s diversity and inclusion newsletter.