One in every four women in the United States will have an abortion in their lifetime. Whether or not we individually support a woman’s right to make this incredibly difficult decision, let’s please at least be kind to one another. It’s never the wrong thing to extend grace to one another.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, states – and as an extension the American people – are now fully in control of the abortion debate. Advocates on both sides have taken the fight to the voting booth, and some state legislatures have enacted abortion bans and restrictions while others have increased access and protections.
The Facts
Twenty states now ban abortion or restrict abortion earlier in a pregnancy than was previously allowed under Roe v. Wade.
In the 2024 election, voters in 7 states – Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Montana, New York, Missouri and Nevada – passed measures that enshrine abortion rights into their state constitutions, while similar measures failed to pass in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota.
Between 2020 and 2023, the number of women having abortions in the United States increased, even in states with near-total abortion bans. In 2024, there were around 587,000 abortions nationwide in the first half of the year alone, a 12 percent increase from the year before.
In states with abortion bans, women traveled to other states to undergo the procedure or ordered abortion pills from American doctors online. Six states where abortion is legal – Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, New York and California – have passed “telemedicine abortion shield laws” that allow doctors to send abortion pills to states when abortion is illegal.
In the 13 states that have implemented near-total abortion bans – Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia – abortions increased in all but three (Idaho, Oklahoma and Texas).
The Bottom Line
1787 believes the decision of abortion should be left to the individuals personally involved before the end of the first trimester (typically considered weeks 1 – 13).
EXCEPTIONS: To prevent the death of the mother; to preserve the health of the mother; when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest; and where the embryo or fetus has lethal anomalies incompatible with life.
Although, in medicine, “fetal viability” is the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb (typically considered weeks 23 – 24), we believe this is way too far in a pregnancy to terminate. Opponents of this view argue that women may not realize they are even pregnant before the second trimester, but the facts don’t support this. Most abortions – by far – occur during the first trimester of a pregnancy. In 2021, 93 percent of abortions occurred during the first trimester.
Many health care providers in states with abortion bans have become cautious to the point of causing grave harm to women, including their deaths.
In Texas, for example, doctors can face up to 99 years in prison for performing abortions, which is obviously a terrifying criminal penalty. However, the Texas law remains frustratingly unclear. Dilation and curettages (D&Cs) are a procedure used to perform abortions, but they are also used as a standard protocol of maternal health when a patient is miscarrying. Several times, Texas doctors have hesitated or refused to use D&Cs for women who were actively experiencing a miscarriage, resulting in multiple deaths. Although doctors in Texas have the right to justify their decisions in what is known as an “affirmative defense,” that in no way guarantees they will ultimately avoid criminal charges.
1787 fights to empower women by ensuring them fair and equitable economic opportunities.
It’s impossible to separate economics from this issue. Sixty-one percent (61%) of abortion patients are in their twenties, 72 percent are low-income, and 55 percent have already given birth to one or more children. Although a variety of considerations play a part in the decision to terminate a pregnancy, it’s undeniable that larger underlying inequities – including economic disadvantage, lack of access to family planning, and neighborhood characteristics – are huge factors that impact low-SES (socioeconomic status) women.
1787 supports protecting and improving health and social services for all women.
Ninety-five percent (95%) of abortions are the result of unintended pregnancies. If there were fewer unintended pregnancies, there would be fewer abortions. Period. This concept should not be hard to understand. Being against abortion and, at the same time, being against organizations that provide reproductive health and social services for women – including contraception access – makes zero sense.
Although Planned Parenthood, for example, does offer patient-funded abortion services (the Hyde Amendment prohibits federal dollars from being used to provide abortions, see more on this below) over 95 percent of their services involve family planning, health and sex education, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and other life-saving services.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President JD Vance said that a second Trump administration would defund Planned Parenthood because he and President Trump are “pro-life.” Indeed, Republicans have tried to defund Planned Parenthood for years.
President Trump threatened multiple times to defund Planned Parenthood during his first term, but federal funding for the organization increased during his first two and a half years in office. In fact, government reimbursements and grants to the organization hit record levels in FY2017 and FY2018. The funding increase was mainly to fund a Medicaid program that reimburses Planned Parenthood for providing birth control and preventive services to low-income Americans.
We must protect the funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood at all costs. If these organizations are successfully defunded – by, for example, making an organization ineligible for federal grants or preventing Medicaid patients from receiving care from them – the devastating results would disproportionally affect low-income areas and communities with limited health care options.
1787 supports the Hyde Amendment, the long-standing ban on the federal funding of most abortions. Exceptions to this include: To prevent the death of the mother; to preserve the health of the mother; when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest; and where the embryo or fetus has lethal anomalies incompatible with life.
1787 supports providing appropriate sex education to teenagers.
Again, 95 percent of abortions are the result of unintended pregnancies. Often the very same people who are against abortions are, at the same time, opposed to sex education in schools. This makes zero sense. If there were fewer unintended pregnancies, there would be fewer abortions. Period. There is tremendous power in prevention and education. We are already on the right track in this regard. In 2023, the birth rate among 15- to 19-year-olds fell to their lowest levels ever recorded.
1787 supports access to the safe, effective abortion and miscarriage drugs mifepristone and misoprostol.
In 2023, 63 percent of abortions in the U.S. were medication abortions, meaning they involve taking a pill. This is up from 53 percent in 2020 and 39 percent in 2017.
Politicians who promise to pass a federal law “codifying Roe v. Wade” into the U.S. Constitution – meaning the U.S. Congress would enact a law protecting the abortion law – are misinformed at best.
Thanks to the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – “any powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people” – states essentially oversee lawmaking. The U.S. Congress can only pass laws that are specifically enumerated to them in Article I, Section 8 or the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. These include: to lay and collect taxes; pay debts and borrow money; regulate commerce; coin money; establish post offices; protect patents and copyrights; establish lower courts; declare war; and raise and support an Army and Navy.
Congress can also make laws “necessary and proper” to carry out its enumerated powers – a provision known as the Elastic Clause that is often used to try to expand congressional power. But if Congress tried to codify an abortion law using the Elastic Clause, its efforts would most likely be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, as it should be.