How a Supreme Court ruling gutting Roe wouldn't just affect red states

A Supreme Court Ruling Gutting Roe Wouldn't Just Affect The Red States

Oklahoma on Tuesday enacted a near-total ban on abortion, with only a narrowly defined exception for the health of the mother. It's the latest Republican-run state to put severe abortion restrictions on the books in anticipation of a summer Supreme Court decision that could eviscerate Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that recognized a constitutional right to have an abortion.

More Republican-run states are almost sure to follow, with new abortion restrictions actively under consideration in Florida, Kentucky and West Virginia. Some lawmakers in those states are contemplating the kind of sweeping laws that Oklahoma passed in a sign of how just confident Republicans have become about their ability to rewrite abortion policy in parts of the country where they hold the most power. (HuffPost's Alanna Vagianos wrote about this last week, in case you missed it.)

But if you think that the effects of a Supreme Court ruling against abortion rights would be confined to the most deeply red states, think again.

— Jonathan Cohn (tips, feedback jonathan.cohn@huffpost.com; Twitter @citizencohn)

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