SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
2024 brought more dramatic changes in abortion rights across the U.S. It's been more than two years now since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal right to abortion and gave the issue to the states. Some 20 states have imposed limits on abortion, and some expanded abortion rights. 2025 could be the year states start battling each other in court. NPR's Elissa Nadworny covers the issue and joins us now to explain. Hey, Elissa.
ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: Hello.
MCCAMMON: So 2024 saw 10 states put abortion rights on the November ballot for voters to weigh in on the issue directly. Can you just recap how those votes turned out?
NADWORNY: Well, for the most part, they voted in support of abortion rights. Several states that already protected reproductive rights cemented those protections in their state constitutions, so places like Colorado and New York. But a couple states with restrictions or bans on abortion voted to expand those rights. This includes Arizona and Missouri, both protecting abortion access up to viability, which is about 24 weeks of pregnancy. But in Missouri, Sarah, clinics are still not able to perform abortions.
MCCAMMON: And why is that? I mean, if voters approved that measure, where do things stand?
NADWORNY: Well, Missouri still has several laws on the books restricting abortion. The state's Republican attorney general has been trying to keep some of those laws in place. A judge issued an order blocking the state from enforcing that total ban they have but left in place other restrictions, including some of the licensing requirements for clinics, which Planned Parenthood says are, quote, "medically irrelevant" and prevent their clinics from opening. I was recently in St. Louis at the Planned Parenthood there. And they told me people are calling most days, trying to make appointments for abortions, and the clinic has to send them across the river to Illinois.
MCCAMMON: As the year comes to an end, what is the landscape looking like across the country?
NADWORNY: It's really a patchwork. I mean, take the South. From Texas to Florida up to South Carolina, there's very limited access. But then, in the Northeast or on the West Coast, there's protections. Isaac Maddow-Zimet is a data scientist with the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
ISAAC MADDOW-ZIMET: So I think the abortion landscape right now really is bifurcated - enormous amounts of people traveling from states with bans to states without bans in order to access care.
NADWORNY: He estimates about 170,000 people traveled to different states for an abortion in 2023.
MCCAMMON: So what will you be watching for in the new year?
NADWORNY: Well, abortion numbers have been going up since the Dobbs decision. The number of abortions surpassed one million in 2023. It hasn't been that high in more than a decade. The majority are medication, and about a fifth are via telehealth. And the anti-abortion groups I've talked to see this as a major concern. Kelsey Prichard is the state public affairs director for the group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
KELSEY PRITCHARD: I think some people on our side, on the Republican side, saw the Dobbs decision and, you know, thought, well, mission accomplished. We got what we wanted. But that's not - we're not even close to the end of this fight. We're really just at the beginning of it.
NADWORNY: There are a number of ways that states may move to limit medication abortion, including following the lead of Louisiana, which made the medicine a controlled substance, which makes it harder to access. I'm also watching a lawsuit brought by Texas, suing a doctor in New York for sending abortion medicine to a woman near Dallas. New York has laws protecting the doctor, so it's essentially one state law against another.
MCCAMMON: Elissa, how might the incoming Trump administration figure into all of this at the federal level?
NADWORNY: You know, Sarah, we just don't know yet. He has said he doesn't support a national abortion ban. He doesn't want to limit abortion medication. But an administration has the power to interpret laws and regulations, and anti-abortion groups are urging him to use those to essentially make abortions inaccessible nationwide.
MCCAMMON: NPR's Elissa Nadworny, thanks so much.
NADWORNY: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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