UNBIASED - LAW: The History of Abortion Rights: Then and Now

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

On this episode of "jordan is my lawyer", Jordan discusses the history of abortion rights beginning in 1970 with Roe vs. Wade. The discussion continues into the post-Roe reactions, the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (which almost overturned Roe), the most recent 2022 case of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, trigger bans, and what we can expect now that abortion is no longer considered a fundamental constitutional right.  As always, the bias and opinions are left out of Jordan's analysis. She simply sticks to the facts. Because after all, you can't argue facts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You are listening to the Jordan is My Lawyer. This is your host Jordan, and I give

you the legal analysis you've been waiting for. Here's the deal. I don't care about your political views, but I do ask that you listen to the facts, have an open mind and think for yourselves. Deal? Oh, and one last thing. I'm not actually your lawyer. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast. Today, we are talking about everything you need to know in regards to Roe versus Wade and Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization. If you have never heard of Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization, you need this episode because there are a lot of people out there who have no idea what the relevance is in relation to Roe vs. Wade and it is so incredibly important.

After listening to this episode, you will be able to talk to just about anyone about any aspect of this case and blow people away with the amount you know. But before we jump into that, let me tell you guys a little story, a little story time. So I was officially blocked by my very first news outlet tonight on TikTok. And, you know, I anticipated that happening, obviously, because of the nature of my reporting. I'm very fact-based, you guys know that, who have been following me for a while, and I really have no tolerance for these outlets that use fear-mongering and scare tactics to get the views and to get the likes when they're actually reporting incorrectly.

Like they're, the substance that they're reporting is factually incorrect and it's only to scare you. I can't even express to you how, how mad it makes me. Anyway, so tonight on TikTok, they posted a video saying, you know, talking about this Moore v. Harper case, and again, they reported incorrectly. So I told them, you know, actually, here, let me read you what I said to them. I said, your news outlet repeatedly uses fear-mongering tactics. It's wrong and inappropriate. Get some legal analysts on your team that can report the facts. And they write back to me and they say, arguing with conservative lawyers defending a conservative and illegitimate Supreme Court is a waste of our time. Now, let me just stop right here and tell

you something. If you follow me, you know I do not affiliate with any political party. I don't affiliate with Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, the right, the left. I don't. I make my own opinions and I don't pin myself in one category or the other. So I write back to them and I say, no one brought politics into this besides you. Case and point. Further, if you actually researched, meaning watched my videos before assuming I was a conservative, you would know that I'm not a conservative. And what did this news outlet do? They blocked me. They blocked me. This news outlet blocking me speaks to the exact reason I'm doing what I'm doing. So with that said, now we're going to talk about Roe versus Wade. I'm going to reiterate for

those of you who don't know, I do not share my opinion on this matter. When I report news to you guys and when I explain things and when I teach things, I do not share my opinion. Why? Because my opinion does not matter. Just like your opinion does not matter. What matters is the facts and only the facts. It's the topic everyone is talking about, but what's ironic is that even though everyone's talking about it, most of those people actually have no idea what's going on besides the fact that women no longer have a constitutional right to abortion. But look, I don't blame you because if I'm being honest, if it weren't for law school, I would be just as lost. Law school taught me almost everything I know about this stuff, so I genuinely feel bad

that most people don't have access to the knowledge I have. Or easy access, I guess I should say. But that's why I'm here. So let's get into it. We're going to talk through the history of Roe v. Wade, the controversy following the original decision in 1973, because that might surprise you, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case I'm sure you've heard recently. The newest case and the reason Roe was overturned, Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization. Trigger bans. And we'll wrap it up with what we can expect in the future. That sounds like a lot, but we're going to get through it and we're going to get through every subtopic pretty quickly, but still give you enough information to where you can leave this podcast and talk to like I said

just about anyone about this issue and totally blow their minds with the amount of knowledge you have. So let's start from 1970. Roe versus Wade was a case brought in March of 1970 by a woman named Norma McCorvey. Her name wasn't even Roe. She was given the name Jane Roe. Obviously, we've heard of Jane Doe, John Doe. She was given the name Jane Roe for protection purposes to conceal her identity because of the, you know, amount of controversy that stems from this issue. The law at the root of this lawsuit was Texas's abortion ban at the time,

which essentially banned all abortions except for when the mother's life was in jeopardy. And Texas's law also criminalized abortion. Now, this lawsuit was originally brought by three people. Norma, a doctor who had been arrested before for performing abortions for his patients and had two prosecutions pending against him at the time. And then a couple who was given the name John and Mary Doe, a fictitious name to protect their identity. This couple was originally, or they were eventually found to not have standing. Standing is essentially when you have skin in the game. So because the couple wasn't yet pregnant and the law didn't have any effect on them, they were ruled out of this lawsuit.

The doctor was kept in the lawsuit while it was in district court, but when it made it up to the Supreme Court, the doctor's lawsuit was dismissed because the Supreme Court decided the doctor didn't have standing. So at the end of the day, once the doctor and couple were dropped from the lawsuit, it was Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, against the local district attorney of Texas, Henry Wade. Hence the name Roe versus Wade. So let's quickly recap the underlying facts of Roe's claim. Roe was unmarried and pregnant with her third child

and said that she wanted to terminate her pregnancy because she was unable to get a legal abortion in Texas due to Texas's ban because her life was not a jeopardy, so she didn't fall under the exception, and because she couldn't afford to travel to another state to get an abortion. So her claim was that Texas's law was, one, unconstitutionally vague, meaning it wasn't specific enough. And two, it infringed on her right of personal privacy under the first, fourth, fifth, ninth, and 14th amendments. Now, keep in mind that the right of personal privacy is not explicitly mentioned anywhere

in the constitution. Rather, it's an implied right under the due process clause and a concept that we call substantive due process, which I will get into in a little bit. But for now, what's important is just to realize that this right to privacy is not actually found anywhere in the constitution. So Roe is essentially throwing everything at the wall here to see what'll stick, and sometimes it's what you have to do in these lawsuits. And when it was heard in front of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the three-judge panel ruled in Roe's favor. And the court held that the fundamental right of women to choose where to have children is implicitly protected by the

Ninth Amendment. Now, what is the Ninth Amendment? The Ninth Amendment is basically a constitutional safety net meant to clarify that people have rights other than the fundamental rights listed in the constitution, aka unenumerated rights. Some other rights granted to us in part by the ninth amendment, just as examples, are the right to travel and the right to vote. Contrary to maybe popular belief, those rights don't actually exist anywhere in the constitution. So once the district court made its decision that women do have this fundamental right to abortion, it dismissed Roe's lawsuit, declared the abortion statutes void, and dismissed Roe's application for injunctive relief. And what injunctive relief does essentially is it bans the

states from enforcing the law. So because it had declared the statutes void, it dismissed the request for injunctive relief because it was unnecessary. But Roe felt the injunctive relief should have still been granted, so she appealed to the Supreme Court and the state also appealed to the Supreme Court based on the fact that the abortion statutes were declared void. Once it made its way to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court first looked to the history of abortion in the United States and then looked at Texas's interests behind the criminal abortion laws. This is because whenever a state law infringes on a potential individual right, the court has to balance the state's interest with that particular right. And if it's a right

that's deemed to be a fundamental right, then the state has a higher burden of proving that their regulation is necessary. But we'll get into that. So first, when the court looked at the history of abortion in the United States, they looked at actual history of laws dating all the way back to ancient Greek law. But more importantly, the court looked to the three reasons that explained historically the enactment of criminal abortion laws. The first reason they found was that criminal abortion laws were the product of a Victorian social concern to discourage illicit sexual conduct, which is obviously very outdated. The second reason the court found was that in the 1900s, abortions were actually hazardous to women and abortion mortality was high. And the third reason they found for criminalizing abortion was the state's interest in protecting

prenatal life. The court acknowledged that the first two reasons were outdated and not at issue in the Roe case because one, ancient Victorian social concern is no longer of relevance, and two, abortions no longer pose the same level of danger to women as they did in the early 1900s. So because of this, the court specifically addressed the third reason, the state's interest in protecting prenatal life, and balanced this interest with the woman's right to an abortion, if any. The reason that it was important for the court to determine, first and foremost, if a woman has a fundamental right to abortion is because if the right is a fundamental right, then like I said, the state has a higher burden of proving its

interest in protecting prenatal life. This is what we call the strict scrutiny test, and it's the highest, most stringent standard. On the contrary, if the court were to find that abortion is not a fundamental right and that abortion is just, say, a mere medical procedure, then the state would have a much lower burden as to how interested they were in regulating abortion. In other words, it wouldn't be hard for the state to prove that regulating abortion is necessary. The Roe Court ultimately found that, yes, the right to abortion was a fundamental right, but they acknowledged that the right to abortion wasn't an explicit right in the Constitution. Rather, it was implied through the right to privacy, which, as I mentioned, is also

an implied right. So essentially, the court was saying that the right to abortion was an implied right within another implied right. This concept is what we call substantive due process, which stands for the proposition that certain rights and liberties are so fundamental that although they're not mentioned in the Constitution, they cannot be infringed upon. And substantive due process stems from the due process clause, which is in the Constitution. And what the due process clause says is that no person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Well, over time, the Supreme Court created this concept called substantive due process, which, as I said, essentially just means that there are certain liberties within the due process clause that are so fundamental that although they're not explicitly mentioned in the

Constitution, the government cannot infringe upon them. The court then said that this implied right of privacy, whether it be founded in the 14th Amendment or the 9th Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, it is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. So the Roe Court didn't really specify which part of the Constitution necessarily granted the right to abortion. Instead, they were just like, well, we've upheld an implicit right to privacy in the past under a variety of amendments, and that right, in our opinion, is broad enough to also cover the right to abortion. So once the court determined that the right to abortion was a fundamental right, the next step was to balance the state's interest in

regulating abortion in accordance with that strict scrutiny standard. What this means is that the state needed to show that they had a, quote, compelling interest to regulate abortion. So when they did this balancing act, so to speak, the court said that the detriment that the state would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. And they give a few potential negative effects that banning abortion would have, such as a distressful life in future, psychological harm, the problems that arise when you bring an unwanted child into a family, the stigma of unmarried motherhood, etc. state clarified that the right to terminate a pregnancy is not absolute and that some state regulation is appropriate and that at some point the state's interest in protecting prenatal life become dominant over the woman's right to abortion. And what the court meant by that is that they didn't think the woman should have the absolute right to terminate her pregnancy up until the day

she gave birth and that at some point in the woman's pregnancy, the government can step in and regulate abortion. So the court said that although they're not really responsible for determining when life begins, they did pinpoint this point of viability at 24 weeks because they said the fetus presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb at this point. In setting this rough estimate of viability at 24 weeks, the court also set forth a trimester framework, which said states cannot regulate abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy. After the first trimester, states can regulate the procedure of abortion and generally regulate abortions in the interests of the mother's health,

but they could not ban them. And then during the final trimester, once the fetus was viable, the states could regulate or ban abortions, except when necessary to save the mother's life. So what did Roe establish? Let's close this up before we move on and sum up Roe in two sentences. The court decided that women had an implied constitutional right to abortion by way of the implied right to privacy. This right is not absolute and the state can regulate abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy. Now what kind of controversy did we see happen? So obviously pro-choice was happy, but some still had their critiques, which is interesting

because although they believed that it was the right decision in the sense that women did have a fundamental right to abortion, they thought that the Supreme Court went about it the wrong way and that perhaps it should have been argued as an equal protection issue rather than a right to privacy issue. Some argued that the decision went too far, that the decision to create a fundamental right to abortion was judicial overreach, and that that should have been a legislative action. And actually, someone who said this back in 1974, one year after the decision, was President Biden. He has since obviously changed his position on the stance, but it's just interesting to know, you know, all sides of it. So he actually said back in 1974 that the court's decision was overreaching, and it was kind of dipping its toe into the legislative waters, which Ruth Bader Ginsburg also said. She was a former Supreme Court

justice, for those of you who don't know, and she was a great justice. I'm going to get into what her thoughts were on the Roe decision, but some argued that the Roe decision didn't go far enough and that the right to abortion should have been placed within a human rights framework rather than a civil rights framework. And then we have Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was a former Supreme Court Justice. She recently passed away in 2020, I believe. And she said that this issue should have been argued as an equal protection issue because it potentially would have given it more ground to stand on, so to speak, and not subjected it to possibly being overturned in the future. She also stated that the Supreme Court should have ruled Texas's ban unconstitutional and

not necessarily created a blanket right to abortion. Because the question before the court was, is Texas's ban unconstitutional? And she said that if the court would have ruled Texas's ban unconstitutional and just left it at that, that then the court would see more cases and they would decide each case on a case-by-case basis, a term which she coins as incrementalism, and it would have created a dialogue between the legislature and the court. Because since Roe created this right to abortion, it stopped a movement, she said. So up until Roe, we had seen all these cases trying to obtain more rights to abortion. But then once the Supreme Court decided that women do have a fundamental constitutional right to it, it was the complete opposite. All the cases the

court saw was to restrict abortion. So Ruth Bader Ginsburg was just like, you know what, if they just would have ruled Texas's ban unconstitutional, moved on, taken each case on a case-by-case basis, we likely would have been in a different situation. But because Roe gave the right to abortion, which she agreed with, she did agree that women should have a right to abortion, but she just thinks it should have been gone about in a different way that perhaps would have boded well in the future. And then you have your pro-life side. They're obviously not happy with the Roe decision. Their main arguments are that, you know, life begins at conception. This is essentially legalizing murder. Abortion is against the right to life, the fundamental right to life. Abortions remove potential contributors to society. So that's

their main argument. So you have, just like you have now, you have your people that aren't happy with it, you have your people that are happy with it. Just back then it was opposite of what it is today. So now we're going to fast forward to 1992, Planned Parenthood versus Casey. This case was overturned alongside Roe, and we're going to get into what this case was about because it added on, it essentially affirmed the Roe decision and also at the same time changed it a little bit. So this case stemmed from a challenge to five provisions of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982. And the specific provisions that were challenged were the informed consent provision, which stated a woman had to give her informed consent prior to the procedure. The doctor had to provide her with specific information at least 24 hours before the procedure. Second provision was spousal notice. So a woman getting an abortion had to sign a

statement declaring that she had notified her husband prior to undergoing the abortion. There were exceptions here. Then you had the parental consent provision for minors. There was a medical emergency definition provision that was challenged, which just essentially defined what a medical emergency was. And then reporting requirements that were challenged. So when a physician has to report the abortion. The plaintiffs in this case were five abortion clinics, as well as physicians who provided abortion services.

The district court, which is the first court to hear this case, held that all five provisions were unconstitutional. Unconstitutional, meaning they went against the constitution. None of these five provisions were allowed. The third circuit court of appeals, which is the next court that heard this case, affirmed in part and reversed in part. The appellate court found that four of the five provisions of the Pennsylvania law were constitutional, but that the spousal notification requirement was unconstitutional. Now, here's an interesting fact for you.

Justice Alito, who wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health that overturned Roe v. Casey, sat on the three-judge panel that ruled at the appellate level in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and he concurred in part and dissented in part from the majority opinion, saying that the spousal notification requirement should have also been upheld as constitutional. So in Justice Alito's opinion, all five provisions of the Pennsylvania law should have been upheld as constitutional. So I thought that was interesting because obviously he sat on, he is on the Supreme Court now. So after the appellate level, Planned Parenthood versus Casey went up to the Supreme Court. And at the time that this case reached the Supreme Court, there were eight Republican justices and one justice who

was a Democrat. But the justice who was a Democrat was actually one of the two dissenters in the Roe decision, so did not agree with the right to an abortion. That's interesting. And you guys know I don't typically like to involve politics in my fact based reporting, but this is interesting in the sense that now there's so much talk around the conservative court and that's why, you know why Roe and Casey were overturned. But at the time Casey was decided, which reaffirmed Roe, it was basically all Republican justices. So I just thought that fact was interesting. So when Planned Parenthood versus Casey made its way to the Supreme Court, the court upheld the right to an abortion under the Due Process Clause, but replaced the strict

scrutiny test that we talked about with the undue burden standard when evaluating state-imposed restrictions, and the Casey Court rejected the trimester framework. The undue burden standard that the Casey Court implemented essentially said that abortion restrictions were unconstitutional when they were enacted for, quote, purpose of effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a non-viable fetus. Under this new standard, the court upheld four of the five challenged provisions of Pennsylvania's law. So they agreed essentially with the appellate court and they said that the husband notification requirement was unduly burdensome, therefore it did not pass constitutional muster. Interesting fact number three, Roe was almost overturned when Casey was heard in front of the Supreme Court. After oral arguments concluded in Casey, the justices got

together and conferred with one another and and there was an initial five-justice majority to uphold all five contested provisions in the Pennsylvania law and overturn Roe. However, Justice Kennedy switched sides shortly after, resulting in a 5-4 decision that reaffirmed Roe. So if it weren't for Justice Kennedy switching sides, Roe actually would have been overturned back in 1992 when Casey was heard. So after Casey, here's what's established. So we went through what was established in 1973 when Roe was decided, and now we're going to go through what's established as of 1992 when Casey's decided.

So one, women still had the fundamental right to abortion, but the Casey Court specified that this right was found under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. So the Casey Court was a bit more specific than Roe. We also knew, once Casey was decided, that the test in determining the constitutionality of a state law regulating abortion was no longer strict scrutiny, but rather the undue burden standard. Moreover, women had the right to pre-viability abortion without quote undue interference from the state. The state could restrict abortion post-viability, and the Casey Court agreed with Roe that the point of viability was 24 weeks. So that's what's established as of 1992. Now we're going to fast forward in time

about 30 years to just about a month ago, June 2022, Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization. This is the case that overturned Roe and Casey. So let's start from the beginning and figure out what happened. So in 2018, Mississippi enacted the Mississippi Gestational Age Act, which banned abortions after 15 weeks, except in the case of a medical emergency or severe fetal abnormality. This ban was in direct contradiction with Roe and Casey, considering Roe established and Casey affirmed that states could not ban abortion prior to 24 weeks. Mississippi knew what they were doing, though. They knew that if they enacted this law, it would be challenged.

Their intention was to get Roe and Casey overturned. Within one day of the Gestational Age Act being passed, Mississippi's only abortion clinic, Jackson Women's Health Organization, sued Thomas Dobbs, the state health officer with the Mississippi State Department of Health. The district court ruled in favor of the abortion clinics and prevented enforcement of the law. The appellate court affirmed the district court's ruling and the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. So the question before the court was, are all pre-viability abortion bans unconstitutional? So take note that the question before the court wasn't, do women have a right to abortion? It was instead, are all pre-viability abortion bans unconstitutional, but the court decided to answer the former along with the latter,

kind of like how in Roe, the court answered whether or not women had a right to abortion, when really the question in front of them was, is Texas's ban on abortion unconstitutional? So now let's look at the court's analysis in Dobbs and what eventually led them to overturning Roe and Casey. So because the right to abortion isn't mentioned in the Constitution, the court had to determine whether the right was implied in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. And the court said, in order to deem something a fundamental right not found in the Constitution, it must be deeply rooted in this nation's history. And the Supreme Court found that the abortion right is not deeply rooted in this nation's history. Now, the court made mention

that the arguments in support of Roe and Casey actually didn't press the issue of deep roots either. Instead, Roe said that the right is incorporated in the right to privacy. Casey said the right is founded within the freedom to make intimate and personal choices that are quote central to interracial marriage. Turner v. Safely, the right to marry while in prison. Griswold, the right to obtain contraceptives. Lawrence v. Texas, the right to engage in private consensual sexual acts. And Obergefell v. Hodges, the right to same-sex marriage. They cited these cases because they're saying, look, all of these rights the Supreme Court has granted based on the fact that humans have the freedom to make these intimate and personal choices that are central to personal dignity and autonomy. But the Supreme Court in Dobbs made a sharp distinction between those cases and the right to abortion.

What Dobbs said is that the abortion right isn't necessarily personal dignity because abortion destroys potential life. None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involve the critical moral question posed by abortion. And that's not my words, that's the court's words. So therefore, the court stated that those cases, quote, do not support the right to obtain an abortion and by the same token, our conclusion that the constitution does not confer such a right not support the right to obtain an abortion, and by the same token, our conclusion that the Constitution does not confer such a right, meaning a right to abortion, does not undermine those other cases in any way. Then, lastly, the court analyzed the stare decisis factors. Stare decisis, if you're not familiar, is the process used when the court is deciding whether or not

to overturn precedent. So there are certain factors that a court has to analyze before they can overturn a prior decision. The first factor is the nature of the court's error. And here they had to ask, was Roe egregiously wrong? The Supreme Court said that yes, Roe and Casey were egregiously wrong and deeply damaging, and that the issue of abortion was wrongly removed from the people and the democratic process, meaning that the issue of abortion should have stayed with the states, according to the court. The next factor they had to look at in analyzing stare decisis was the quality of reasoning. In other words, where was the basis? Was it in constitutional text? Was it in the history of the United States? Was it in precedent?

The Supreme Court in Dobbs found that Roe stood on quote exceptionally weak grounds. The third factor in the stare decisis analysis is workability. In other words, can the rule imposed be applied and understood in a consistent and predictable manner? And the Supreme Court's analysis focused mainly on Casey's undue burden test, which the court said has been, quote, extremely difficult to implement on a consistent basis. The fourth factor is the effect on other areas of the law. So the effect of the right to abortion on the other areas of the law. And the Supreme Court in Dobbs said that Roe and Casey have led to the distortion of many important but unrelated legal doctrines. And the fifth factor in the stare decisis analysis is reliance interests. In other words, will overruling Roe and Casey threaten other court precedents holding

that the due process clause protects other rights? And this is what we've heard a lot of talk about lately, but the Supreme Court in Dobbs answered this question in the negative and restated, quote, to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion. So in finding that the Constitution offers no implied right to abortion, the court ruled 6-3 in favor of upholding the Mississippi Gestational Age Act. However, the decision to overturn Roe v. Casey was a 5-4 decision. Now, you're probably asking yourself, how can the case that overruled Roe v. Casey be decided 6-3, but yet the decision to overrule Roe and Casey was a five to four decision.

This is because of Chief Justice Roberts. Justice Roberts agreed that the viability point established in Roe and Casey should be discarded under the stare decisis analysis. He says that was too much and came out of thin air, but he said, throwing out the viability point does not require that we take the dramatic step of altogether eliminating the abortion right. Mississippi itself even argued that point before the court. Justice Roberts said that a woman should have the reasonable opportunity to choose, but it need not extend any further than that, and certainly not all the way to viability. As a result, he said, the court should rule that Mississippi's Act, which provides for 15 weeks, is constitutional, but that the court does not need to answer anything else. Justice Roberts's

point is actually a question that's asked by a lot of people, right? They're asking, okay, well, they could have just stopped at Mississippi's law. They didn't have to take away the right to abortion. And that's correct. They didn't have to take away the right to abortion. Keep in mind, people were saying this back in 1973 as well. Ruth Bader Ginsburg specifically said the court could have just ruled Texas's ban on constitutional, but instead they took it many steps further

and created a right to abortion. So what we saw in Dobbs is nothing new. Sometimes the court does take additional steps when arguably unnecessary. So this is what we know after Dobbs. So we recapped what we knew in 1973 after Roe. We recapped what we knew in 1992 after Casey. Now what do we know in 2022 after Dobbs? What we know is that women do not have a constitutional right to abortion and the power is returned to the states as it was pre-Roe. Because the Supreme Court ruled that the right to an abortion does not exist in the Constitution, the Supreme Court does not have the authority to decide how abortion is regulated by the states. Therefore, the power to regulate abortion is returned to the states, and the states

now will weigh the policy arguments for and against abortion restrictions. Now let's talk about trigger bans, and I'm not going to talk about each state specifically. I just want to run through really quickly what trigger bans are and what do they mean. So states started passing legislation once the Mississippi law was challenged back in 2018 because these states anticipated Roe being overturned. So in anticipation of that, they started passing legislation. Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Alabama have the strictest bans. Abortion is essentially banned entirely, except in the cases of medical emergencies. Note that while a state's legislature can enact bans, the state's Supreme Court can rule the ban unconstitutional. At that point, the legislature would go back to

the drawing board, and this is that dialogue that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was referring to. As an example, Florida enacted a 15-week ban. So it was a trigger ban. And once Roe was overturned, Florida's ban on abortion would go from 24 weeks to 15 weeks. Reproductive health providers challenged the 15-week ban. A Florida circuit court judge temporarily blocked the ban from being enforced. The state appealed, so the 15-week ban was reinstated until either it's ruled on or the plaintiffs file a motion to reinstate the injunction. But once it's ruled on, either party can appeal to the Florida Supreme Court for the final decision. So as you can see, there's a lot of things that happen. A state can enact essentially whatever it wants, but that doesn't mean it won't be challenged. Florida's challenge in particular

is based on the fact that the ban violates the right to privacy in the Florida constitution. But just my point is, is that yes, these trigger bans exist and some states have much stricter trigger bans than others. But just know that just because the legislature passes a ban doesn't mean it automatically is going to withstand constitutional muster. All right guys, what can we expect in the future? So here's what you need to know. Certain states will completely ban abortions except for medical emergencies, and they're already doing it. No state will ban abortions outright, meaning that there's no exception for medical emergencies. This would definitely be unconstitutional. You still have to have the health of the mother at issue here.

You still have to have that interest. So you're not going to see any outright bans, meaning abortion is totally banned. It doesn't matter if the mother's dying. You're not going to see that. Certain states won't change their laws at all. They're going to keep them the same. Certain states will make stricter laws than they already have, but not ban them completely, such as what Florida is trying to do with the 15-week ban. And if you're interested in any particular state's laws, you can definitely

look those up. They are accessible to anyone via Google. You may have to do a little bit of digging, but they're there. I can assure you of that. Now guys, look, I know I just gave you a lot of information, but my hope is that it was easy to digest and you feel like you want to run to the nearest rooftop and shout everything you know because you just feel so empowered. I truly feel that if we're all informed and educated and willing to have open-minded conversations with people who maybe our views don't align with, we can change how our society is currently functioning. So take your new knowledge and share it with everyone you know. Remember, no one cares about your opinion, but facts, you cannot argue facts. I'll talk to you guys soon