Roe v Wade overturned: Here's what the ruling means for millions of American women

In a landmark decision that overturns 50 years of constitutional safeguards on one of the most contentious and violently contested topics in American politics, the United States Supreme Court on Friday (June 24th) abolished the right to abortion. The ruling overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the nation's top court, which held that women have the constitutional right to privacy about their own bodies and therefore the right to an abortion.

The court's decision goes against a global trend that has seen abortion restrictions loosen up, particularly in nations like Ireland, Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia where the Catholic Church continues to have significant sway.

Let's take a look at the judgement and what it means for millions of women in America:

The conservative-dominated court declared that individual states can now legalise or restrict the procedure on their own, overturning the historic "Roe v. Wade" ruling from 1973 that established a woman's right to an abortion.

It held that Roe v. Wade and Casey are invalid and that the people and their elected officials should once again have the power to control abortion. "The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion," the court declared.

Abortion "abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views," Justice Samuel Alito said in the majority judgement.

"The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion," he said.

The decision is likely to trigger a flurry of new legislation that severely restricts or outright prohibits abortions in approximately half of the 50 US states, forcing women to travel great distances to states that still allow the practice.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 13 states have adopted so-called "trigger laws" that will ban abortion following the move by the Supreme Court.

Ten others have pre-1973 laws that could go into force or legislation that would ban abortion after six weeks before many women even know they are pregnant.

The overturn of Roe vs Wade was made possible by the former Republican president Donald Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brent Kavanaugh as three conservative justices to the Supreme Court.

You might wonder how a woman can be against her gender's right over their own bodies, but Barrett  has long been opposed to the practice. As per the guardian, Barrett and her co-author in a 1998 paper described the practice as "always immoral" in the eyes of the Catholic church and in another incident called the 1973 judgement 'barbaric'.

In its landmark decision, Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court determined that a pregnant woman's right to an abortion is protected by the US Constitution. The ruling held that women in the United States have a basic right to decide whether to have abortions without undue government interference, striking down numerous federal and state abortion regulations.

The Court argued that prohibiting abortions would violate a pregnant woman's right to privacy for a number of reasons, including the possibility that having an unintended child "may force upon the woman a distressful life and future," that it may cause serious psychological harm, that it may put the mother's physical and mental health at risk, and that there may be "distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child".

Women who live in states with harsh anti-abortion regulations will either have to carry their pregnancy to term, have an abortion secretly or get abortion pills, or leave their state and move to one where the practice is still permitted. In preparation for a surge, a number of Democratic-run states have taken efforts to make abortion more accessible, and clinics have also reallocated their resources.

However, travel is costly, and pro-choice organisations claim that abortion restrictions will have a negative impact on impoverished women, many of whom are Black or Hispanic.

According to the Myers Abortion Facility Database, the average American would have to travel 125 miles (200 kilometres) to the closest clinic that performs legal abortions; however, in Louisiana, the distance increases to 666 miles (1071 kilometres).

"Restricting access to abortion does not reduce the number of procedures," WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had warned earlier.

"It drives women and girls towards unsafe ones", he had tweted adding that "Safe abortion access saves lives."

The WHO estimates that over 25 million unsafe abortions are performed worldwide each year, leading to 39,000 women and girls dying as a result and millions more being hospitalised as a result of complications.

According to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, repealing US women's right to an abortion would have significant financial implications, restrict their incomes, and increase the number of children living in poverty.

In a Senate hearing, Yellen had stated, "I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades".

Health-care access, including abortion "helped lead to increased labour force participation. It enabled many women to finish school. That increased their earning potential. It allowed women to plan and balance their families,  "she stated.