Good morning, Broadsheet readers! The share of funding to female founders declined last year, Vince McMahon settles a WWE lawsuit, and Roe v. Wade's 50th anniversary is here—sort of. Have a restful weekend.
- The almost anniversary. If not for the monumental Supreme Court ruling in June, this Sunday would have been a day of celebration for women’s rights activists. Jan. 22, 2023, marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that protected abortion as a constitutional right—and would have marked 50 years of nationwide reproductive justice.
Instead of a moment of celebration, this anniversary is now a somber milestone. Roe didn’t quite make it to 50 after the court's conservative justices reversed the decades-old precedent. Without blanket protections for abortion access across the country, 24 states have rolled back access to abortion over the past six months. Twelve states have enacted near-total bans on abortion while an additional four enforce bans ranging from six weeks to 18 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute. In at least two more states, abortion is effectively totally unavailable because of the closure of abortion clinics post-Roe. Another eight states either have abortion bans on the books that are currently blocked by courts or are likely to enact new anti-abortion legislation in the future.
