Supreme Court Overturns Roe V. Wade: What Happens Now In NH?

NEW HAMPSHIRE — The Supreme Court of the United States ruled Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade. What does that mean for New Hampshire residents?

The decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito was released Friday, more than a month after a draft of the opinion leaked. It will have an immediate impact on abortion rights in 13 states, largely in the south and west, that have laws in place to ban abortion as soon as Roe is overturned.

At least 26 states are certain or likely to make it nearly impossible for a woman to get a procedure that was legal for her mother, grandmother or even great-grandmother, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research and policy group.

With the decision, abortion will be illegal or a nearly impossible procedure to get in about half of U.S. states, including large swaths of the South, Midwest and Northern Plains.

Abortions up to 24 weeks are legal in New Hampshire.

Friday's 6-3 decision does not change the current abortion landscape in New Hampshire.

A bill is headed to Gov. Chris Sununu's desk that would add an exception to New Hampshire's current 24-week ban for fatal fetal anomalies. There is already an exception to the ban when the life of the mother is at stake. The bill would also remove the state's mandate for ultrasounds for all abortions, only requiring it when the fetus is believed to be 24 weeks old.

Abortion is already illegal or soon will be in 13 states with pre-existing "trigger" laws banning abortion set to take effect with the dismantling of Roe and Casey, and another four are poised to ban it, according to the Guttmcher Institute. Nine have so-called fetal heartbeat laws that make the procedure illegal before many women know they are pregnant.

Abortion rights were long considered settled law; and even as conservative states pushed at-the-time unconstitutional fetal heartbeat laws and others restricting abortion access to bring the court to this moment, many legal scholars doubted a right that generations of women and men had counted on was in serious jeopardy.

The case that made it to a full hearing before the court, Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion, came after former President Donald Trump appointed three conservative judges — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and, a few months before his term ended, Amy Coney Barrett, who replaced liberal stalwart Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September 2020.

The court heard oral arguments on the Mississippi case in December.

Lawyers for the state of Mississippi had proposed an array of mechanisms to uphold the 15-week abortion ban but said the court ultimately should overturn the "egregiously wrong" Roe and Casey rulings.