It has been four years this month since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, and the number of annual abortions in the U.S. has nearly doubled. But the battle continues on other fronts, including efforts to ban the drugs now used in most abortions and to redefine embryos as “children who already exist.”
Overturning Roe was goal No. 1 ever since evangelicals joined the anti-abortion movement in the 1970s and 1980s. But achieving the goal didn’t end abortions. Results are mixed, and the national map has become a checkerboard of five different approaches, according to research and maps created by KFF.
Here are the five approaches, from most to least restricted:
- Abortion is completely banned in 13 states
- Abortion is limited to six to 12 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period in six states
- Abortion is limited to 18 to 22 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period in four states
- Abortion is permitted near viability in 18 states
- Abortion is permitted any time in nine states and Washington, D.C.
Anti-abortionists have cheered bans and restrictions imposed by lawmakers in red states while voters in 10 other states have enacted laws or constitutional amendments guaranteeing abortion access.
President Donald Trump, who once was hailed as America’s “most pro-life president” by Focus on the Family CEO Jim Daly, has distanced himself from the movement that helped elect him. The administration supports IVF and has allowed continued access to the abortion drug mifepristone.
“People’s patience is at an end on this point,” a Students for Life of America leader told NPR.
These challenges have led to debates and occasional divisions among anti-abortionist activists. For example, some want to see prosecutions of women who get abortions, while some movement leaders reject that idea. Legislation to prosecute women has so far failed in Texas and other states.
Restricting access to mifepristone is the focus of today’s war on abortion.
Restricting access to mifepristone is the focus of today’s war on abortion, alongside efforts to make fetal personhood the law of the land.
Louisiana — with the backing of 21 other states — sued to stop residents of its state from using the drug, which remains available after the Supreme Court declined to restrict it as the case plays out. The suit claims the Biden administration illegally expanded access to the drug.
“Every year, doctors and activists in states like California and New York mail a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved abortion drug called mifepristone to thousands of Louisiana residents for the express purpose of causing abortions in Louisiana that are blatantly unlawful,” claims the Louisiana lawsuit.
Some anti-abortion groups are pressing federal agencies to declare the drug dangerous to women’s health and restrict it for safety reasons. But studies consistently show it to be safe and effective.
Conservative evangelicals, along with Republican attorneys general from 14 states and 19 GOP members of Congress, are pressing the Environmental Protection Agency to declare mifepristone residue in public drinking water a contaminant that endangers human health.
This effort comes as conservative evangelicals applaud the EPA’s dramatic rollback of efforts to regulate pollutants that endanger human health.
“Americans across the country are using this harmful water, polluted by death and chemicals, for bathing, drinking, cooking and cleaning on a daily basis,” said Focus on the Family. “This issue not only jeopardizes the American people’s health and correlates with rising infertility rates, but the flushing of fetal remains into our sewer system is utterly disrespectful towards the countless babies who have been denied their right to life.”
Scientists say there’s no evidence mifepristone poses an environmental risk.
Meanwhile, both the White House and Congress are backing efforts to redefine who counts as a human being by classifying embryos as children.
Both the White House and Congress are backing efforts to redefine who counts as a human being.
Trump issued new rules for a George W. Bush-era Embryo Adoption Program that allows people to adopt embryos that are created but not used in IVF procedures. Trump’s new rules repeatedly refer to these embryos as “children.”
The change appears in a document from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “Notice of Funding Opportunity Embryo Adoption Awareness and Services.”
“The federal government just classified frozen embryos as ‘children,’” wrote Jessica Valenti, who covers abortion news via Substack. “It’s a significant step toward enshrining fetal personhood — and a brazen move from an administration that’s been trying to avoid public abortion battles ahead of the midterms.”
Valenti said the change to language claiming fetal personhood was “a deliberate gift to the conservative legal groups eager to make that precise claim in court. … The White House is doing something very pointed: they’re giving conservative legal organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom the foundation they need to argue for fetal personhood in the courts.”
In Congress, the Life at Conception Act of 2026 has been introduced in the Senate and House. The Senate version says, “The terms ‘human person’ and ‘human being’ include each member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization or cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.”
The stated purpose of the bill is “to implement equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.”
Planned Parenthood says additional fronts in the battle against abortion include:
- Attacks on Planned Parenthood patients
- Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers laws
- Unconstitutional abortion bans
- Non-surgical abortion restrictions
- Biased counseling, mandatory ultrasounds and waiting periods
Democrats, meanwhile, seek to make political hay of unpopular restrictions.
“Republicans created this crisis. They are making it worse. And they are not done,” say Senate Democrats. “The crisis Republicans created is no longer theoretical — it is playing out in emergency rooms, exam rooms and homes across America. Women have been denied life-saving care, forced to wait until they are near death, made to carry doomed pregnancies, and left bleeding, grieving and traumatized because politicians banned doctors from doing their jobs. Clinics are closing, patients are forced to travel hundreds of miles and basic reproductive health care is being pushed further out of reach.”