A month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that provided a constitutional right to abortion access, more than half of U.S. states have either banned or moved to limit abortions.
With bans already in place, upcoming, currently enjoined in courts or possible in the future, about 80% of the active abortion clinics identified in a 2021 database for the contiguous U.S. will be (or already have been) put out of commission.
This directly affects more than 37 million people of reproductive age in the U.S.
How states have moved on abortion since the Supreme Court ruling
Eleven states banned abortions on June 24, the day of the Supreme Court ruling. Two other states passed bans in the next 10 days.
Four other states, including Idaho, are expected to ban abortions this summer.
Conversely, 17 states have expanded abortion protections and access.
Abortion bans are currently enjoined in four state courts as lawsuits challenging the state bans move through the states' judicial systems. Nine other states have restricted access, and their Republican legislators have moved to ban abortions through the Legislature or state courts.
How access to abortions is unfolding
Nearly 8,000 of 18,648 identified abortion clinics cannot currently carry out their full practice, according to an analysis of the 2021 Myers Abortion Facility database. This includes 402 clinics in Florida, where abortions are now banned after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
West Coast states, which have allied to defend access to abortion rights, account for 800, or 4%, of the abortion clinics recorded in the 2021 database. That figure is down from 4.5% of active centers two years prior as the COVID-19 pandemic led to several closures.
The database identified 234 active clinics in Washington as of June 2021. That's half the number of Washington clinics identified in 2019.
