Good morning. It took almost half a century to overturn Roe v Wade, the US supreme court decision that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right. But in the three days since the court’s new ruling was published, a settlement which Americans once assumed was permanent has been immediately shattered.
The conservative-majority court’s decision allows individual states to ban abortion for the first time since 1973. (For a summary of what it means, see this explainer by Jessica Glenza.) Like any supreme court ruling, the document published on Friday was long and complicated – but the consequences which flow from it are sweeping, and have proceeded at a pace which belies the court’s claimed solemnity.
