The abortion bans, state by state

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Republican-controlled legislatures have enacted some of the strictest abortion laws in the developed world. This is the record, from the first federal restriction in 2019 to the ballot fight still unresolved in Missouri.

It started before Dobbs. In 2019, the Trump administration's Title X gag rule barred federally funded family planning clinics from referring patients for abortion, and Planned Parenthood and other providers withdrew from the program rather than comply. HHS later reported roughly 844,000 fewer people served in a single year, a 22 percent drop in access to contraception and STI testing that had nothing to do with abortion itself. The Biden administration rescinded the rule in 2021, but it previewed what was coming.

Texas moved first. SB 8, effective September 2021, banned abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy and deputized private citizens to sue anyone who helped a patient obtain one, a bounty-hunter enforcement design built specifically to survive early court review. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe the following June, states with pre-Dobbs "trigger laws" moved immediately. Alabama banned abortion in virtually all circumstances, with no exception for rape or incest, exactly as written years earlier. Texas's own trigger law, HB 1280, followed with felony penalties.

The bans kept coming in states that hadn't pre-committed. Florida banned abortion at six weeks in 2023; a 2024 ballot measure to overturn it won 57 percent of the vote and failed anyway, because Florida requires 60 percent to amend its constitution. South Carolina enacted a similar ban the same year, upheld by its own state supreme court. States that couldn't ban abortion outright went after the people who help patients get one anyway: Idaho made it a felony to help a minor travel out of state for an abortion, and Louisiana became the first state to classify mifepristone and misoprostol, the two drugs used in medication abortion, as controlled dangerous substances.

The federal government joined in after January 2025. A provision in the 2025 budget law blocked Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services like cancer screenings and contraception, serving roughly 2.1 million patients, until an appeals court allowed it to stand. In June 2025, CMS rescinded federal guidance that had told hospitals emergency abortion care is required under federal law even in ban states, removing that protection for doctors treating a pregnant patient in crisis.

The fight isn't over. In 2024, Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment restoring abortion rights. In 2025, the state legislature put a repeal of that amendment back on the 2026 ballot, bundled with a ban on transition care for minors, forcing voters to decide the same question twice in three years.