The End of Roe v. Wade: Abortion Laws, Abortion Pills, and What Comes Next

In June 2022, the United States Supreme Court released its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Dobbs opinion overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion that had been established nearly 50 years earlier.

Roe prevented states from banning abortions before the point at which a fetus could be “viable” outside of the uterus. Dobbs returns the issue of how to regulate abortion—and whether to allow it at all—to the states.

Since Roe was overturned, abortion has been banned or severely restricted in about half of U.S. states, while other states have moved to expand and protect access.

What Was Roe v. Wade?

Roe v. Wade is one of a handful of landmark Supreme Court decisions. The case was decided in 1973 and has become shorthand for abortion access in the United States. But what was the case about? And what's happened in the decades since Roe was decided?

Roe was a challenge to a Texas statute that made it a crime to perform an abortion unless a woman's life was at stake. The case was brought by "Jane Roe," an unmarried woman who wanted to legally end her pregnancy. The Supreme Court sided with Roe and struck down the Texas law. The Court ruled that the United States Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy" that includes a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. But, the Court said, the right to an abortion isn’t absolute. The Roe decision allowed states to limit the right after fetal viability, except when abortion would be necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.

Almost immediately after Roe was decided, state and federal lawmakers started passing laws designed to test and chip away at Roe. In 1992, the Supreme Court revisited Roe in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.

Abortion opponents hoped that the Court would overturn Roe in Casey. Instead, the Justices affirmed that states couldn't ban abortions before fetal viability, but replaced Roe’s “strict scrutiny” standard of review for abortion regulations with a more relaxed “undue burden” standard, paving the way for more restrictions on abortion access.

Examples of state abortion restrictions that were upheld after Casey include:

• limitations on who can perform abortions and where they can be performed
• mandatory waiting periods and counseling before an abortion
• requiring parental involvement in a minor’s decision to have an abortion, and
• bans on public funding and private insurance coverage for abortions.

By 2022, even before Roe was overturned, six states had imposed so many restrictions on abortion that only one abortion provider was left in each state.

How Was Roe v. Wade Overturned?

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe. The case was about a Mississippi law passed in 2018 that banned nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, significantly before fetal viability, which is around 23 weeks. The law was in direct conflict with Roe and Casey, which prevented states from banning pre-viability abortions.

All states typically have to follow Supreme Court decisions. And courts, even the United States Supreme Court, typically must stand by previous decisions (a legal principle called "stare decisis"). The idea behind stare decisis is that courts shouldn't revisit issues that have been decided, so that rulings are predictable, consistent, and reliable.

When Casey was decided in 1992, the Court emphasized the importance of stare decisis and said that overturning Roe would come at too great a cost to people who had relied on the decision for two decades.

But three decades after Casey, the Supreme Court reversed course in Dobbs, saying that Roe had to be overruled because it was “egregiously wrong and deeply damaging.”

So, what changed between Roe and Casey on the one hand and Dobbs on the other? Many say the makeup of the Supreme Court. While campaigning, eventual President Donald Trump vowed to appoint justices who would overrule Roe. And three of the five justices who reversed 50 years of settled law (called "precedent") on the issue of abortion were his appointees.

Which States Have Banned or Restricted Abortion?

Before Dobbs, pre-viability abortions were legal in all 50 states. As of early 2026, according to the New York Times, 20 states now ban abortion or restrict abortions earlier than the standard set by Roe.

Abortion law is still in flux in many states while courts, lawmakers, and voters weigh in on old and new bans and restrictions.

Can You Still Get Abortion Pills by Mail?

Much of the recent advocacy and media attention surrounding reproductive rights has focused on Roe and Dobbs. But in December 2021, the FDA made a decision that allowed more people to get abortion pills.

Medication abortion, or abortion with pills, is a pregnancy termination method that involves taking two different drugs to end a pregnancy. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, medication abortion accounted for 63% of all abortions in the United States in 2023.

The pills for a medication abortion, mifepristone and misoprostol, are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The FDA used to strictly limit where abortion pills could be given and who could prescribe them. But in April 2021, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA temporarily lifted the requirement that patients get the pills in person. In December 2021, the FDA made the temporary change permanent, allowing health care providers to prescribe abortion pills remotely and mail them to patients.

In January 2023, the FDA further expanded access to abortion pills by allowing retail pharmacies to offer the pills in stores or by mail order if they agree to certain rules. Patients would still need a prescription from a certified health care provider. In March 2024, CVS and Walgreens announced they would begin selling mifepristone with a prescription consistent with state laws.

The legal status of mifepristone access has been in flux. Anti-abortion advocates are challenging medication abortions in federal court. In April 2023, a federal district court judge ruled that the FDA's longstanding approval of the abortion pill mifepristone was invalid. The US Supreme Court granted review of the decision in December 2023 but ultimately decided that the doctors and anti-abortion organizations attempting to invalidate the FDA's approval of the bill didn't have standing to challenge the agency's actions.

However, new legal challenges soon followed. In late 2025, the state of Louisiana filed a federal lawsuit against the FDA, arguing that the agency shouldn't have dropped the requirement that patients have to visit a doctor's office or clinic to pick up mifepristone. On May 1, 2026, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Louisiana, requiring the FDA to bring back the in-person pickup requirement nationwide. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a quarter of all abortions in the U.S. are now provided via telehealth, so the ruling could have a significant impact on abortion access. On May 4, the U.S. Supreme Court signed a temporary order, called an administrative stay, pausing the Fifth Circuit's ruling. The order keeps the old rules in place at least until May 11, 2026, while the full Supreme Court reviews the case and decides what to do next.

UCLA Law has developed a mifepristone litigation tracker to stay up to date with the latest legal developments shaping access to mifepristone.

Could Contraception or Same-Sex Marriage Rights Be Next?

Now that some members of the current Supreme Court have demonstrated a willingness to take away a long-held constitutional right, many people are wondering if other constitutional rights could be next.

Roe said that a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion is based on a constitutional "right to privacy." The majority opinion in Dobbs says that nothing in the opinion “should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” But Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion, wrote that the Court should reconsider other decisions involving constitutional rights rooted in privacy, including the right to contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut), same-sex intimacy (Lawrence v. Texas), and same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges).

In direct response to Dobbs, federal lawmakers passed the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) in December 2022. The law requires states to recognize the validity of out-of-state marriages, including same-sex and interracial unions, but it doesn't guarantee the right to marry as Obergefell does.

What Are the Ongoing Legal Battles Over Abortion?

Many experts say that Dobbs doesn’t mean that the abortion debate is even close to over. They predict that battles over abortion laws and regulations will continue to play out in state legislatures, courts, and elections all over the country for years to come.

Lawmakers will surely continue to fight over issues like whether states can:

• ban residents from traveling to get an abortion
• ban birth control methods like morning-after pills and IUDs, and
• shield abortion patients and providers in states where abortion is legal from actions taken by states with bans or restrictions on abortion.

Courts will have to weigh in on excruciating questions about who qualifies for an exception to an abortion ban and whether abortion bans conflict with a federal law known as EMTALA, which requires doctors to provide stabilizing treatment to patients in emergency rooms.

Find Current Abortion Laws in Your State

If you have questions about abortion laws in your state, the Center for Reproductive Rights updates the legal status of abortion in real time. The Guttmacher Institute also tracks state abortion laws and policies.