Here we are, less than a month into Donald Trump’s presidency, and he and his merry band of misfits are busy actively working to dismantle our rights and our democracy. And if they get their way and finally control women’s bodies the way they want to, there will be several states that take the lead in banning abortion.
Apparently, 10 states across the country have just been itching since 1973 to have their say (again!) on a woman’s uterus, hoping for a Supreme Court reversal on Roe v. Wade. And under Trump, they may actually get their chance.
They are often referred to as "trigger laws," because even though each state's provision works a bit differently, the measures are "triggered" by the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Should that occur, these states commit to making abortion illegal in all cases, except to protect a mother's life, just as it was before the Supreme Court's 1973 ruling. (In four states, the trigger law makes the switch back to illegal abortion automatic.)
Remember when Trump promised to appoint Supreme Court justices that would overturn the court’s ruling that abortion is a constitutionally protected right? Yeah, that seemed pretty outrageous when he was a candidate. But now that he’s president, its not so far-fetched.
And that’s not all. Many of these trigger laws not only impact a woman’s right to an abortion, but can also limit her access to birth control.
Many such laws, including the one in Illinois, go even further, saying that if Roe is overturned, the state intends to renew their so-called "policy" that life begins at conception. This approach could not only affect the legality of abortion but also common forms of birth control, such as Plan B or IUDs, which some anti-abortion advocates consider to be abortifacients despite medical consensus to the contrary.
Of course, overturning laws can be a slow process and rolling back Roe v. Wade would likely take time. But in some states trigger laws could move quickly and in other places like Texas, lawmakers are actively introducing new trigger laws in anticipation of a reversal.
If the Supreme Court did overturn Roe, the enforceability of these trigger clauses is complicated and difficult to predict, Kraiem explains. For instance, six states—Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio—enshrine only their intention to revert back to pre-Roe policies, without requiring an automatic switch. Since a number of those legislatures tend to skew conservative, that intention could very quickly become law.
"If you look at this list of states, there are a bunch where it would be easy to pass an abortion ban very, very quickly," says Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that tracks abortion legislation.
Women of a certain age can tell you horror stories about the days pre-Roe and pre-birth control when they had friends and relatives who died from unsafe abortions and when they had to operate underground abortion networks to get women the reproductive justice they deserve. It’s frightening to know that, in the Trump era, the possibility of returning to these days could be just one judge away.