WASHINGTON : As the Supreme Court court weighs the future of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, a resurgent anti-abortion movement is looking to press its advantage in state-by-state battles while abortion-rights supporters prepare to play defense.
Both sides seem to be operating on the assumption that a court reshaped by former President Donald Trump will either overturn or seriously weaken Roe.
“We have a storm to weather,” said Elizabeth Nash, state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. “We have to weather the storm so that in the future — five, 10, 15 years from now — we’re talking about how we managed to repeal all these abortion bans.”
Susan Arnall, director of outreach for the anti-abortion Right to Life League, said she was particularly encouraged by Justice Samuel Alito’s emphasis on the concept of “viability” for the fetus as a guiding principle on when to ban the termination of a pregnancy. She predicts that modern advancements in medicine will continue to shrink the window in which a fetus is not viable, opening the door to a host of medically intricate state-level debates.
