For 49 years after Roe v. Wade, Americans had the right to obtain an abortion if they became pregnant. Then, two years ago, with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court put an end to it.

The Biden administration and some blue states — supported by a network of nonprofits focused on reproductive care — aggressively sought to compensate, while many red states enacted near-total bans on abortion.

It’s been nearly one year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion via the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health decision. In the months since, abortion access has been mostly banned in 14 states, stringent gestational limits have been put in place in several others, and the approval of medication abortion has been challenged in the federal courts.

Such policies have left both patients and providers scrambling to navigate harsh new restrictions and penalties. For many patients, these policies have meant traveling out of state, incurring serious risks to their own health, and in some cases, carrying unwanted pregnancies to term. For providers, the end of Roe has meant fears of being punished for providing abortions, possible discipline from state medical boards, and, in states where abortion remains legal, an influx of patients from other places.

The US Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has raised the stakes of competitive governor’s races in 2022, with Democratic and Republican candidates advocating for competing visions of abortion access.

In some states, Democrats hope to wield veto power over legislation from Republican-controlled state legislatures that want to curb abortion rights. Elsewhere, Republicans want to use governorships to defend existing state laws restricting abortion and are charting a path to further curb access to the procedure.

Earlier this year, five people altered the landscape of reproductive rights in more than a dozen states across the country when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In November, millions of voters will weigh in, casting votes in dozens of races and ballot measures that will determine how restrictive their state can be.

Ballot initiatives in three states could determine abortion access for millions of women and what kind of reproductive health care is available to them. Abortion has also become a key issue in races for governor and state attorneys general, who have direct control over their states’ abortion laws and how they are enforced.

On Tuesday, an unprecedented number of Kansans voted against a constitutional amendment that would have allowed lawmakers to end abortion protections. That’s a big win for women’s rights, but the outcome also carries major implications for elections nationwide this November. It’s especially true in those states where abortion rights are on the ballot after the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade and where Democrats are seeking to stay in power.

Contrary to what some conservatives had thought, abortion is an issue that can mobilize voters.

Kansans voted decisively against a ballot measure on Tuesday that would have allowed state lawmakers to further restrict abortion access in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which could have severely limited abortion access in the region.

The measure, known as the “Value Them Both Amendment,” was defeated 59 to 41 percent (as of Wednesday morning). The campaign director of Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, the pro-abortion rights group that worked to sink the amendment, hailed their victory as “truly an historic day for Kansas and an historic day for America.” Value Them Both, the group that backed the amendment, promised to ensure their loss is just “a temporary setback.”

A month after the Supreme Court’s decision overruling Roe v. Wade, it’s unclear whether many patients with dangerous pregnancies can receive medically necessary abortions. Some women have traveled to other states for lifesaving care because doctors in their home state feared prosecution. Others were left to bleed by their health care providers who feared they couldn’t legally provide care that would stop it.

A lawsuit, filed by the Justice Department on Tuesday, could alleviate at least some of these cases — and potentially provide legal clarity to doctors who want to perform medically necessary abortions but fear being hauled off to prison if they do. The case is United States v. Idaho.

The case of a 10-year-old Ohio rape survivor who traveled to Indiana to obtain an abortion drew national attention to Ohio’s near-total abortion ban, which does not allow abortions even in cases of rape or incest.

Ohio isn’t unusual. Despite broad agreement among Americans that victims of rape should be allowed to obtain an abortion, nearly all of the states with abortion bans do not make exceptions for rape or incest.

Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) uses a period-tracking app. So do many of her friends and constituents, who messaged her about those apps after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked. Major privacy concerns with period tracking apps emerged earlier this year, as the possibility that abortion could become illegal in certain parts of the country loomed. That’s when Jacobs realized many people didn’t know what they were supposed to do to keep their online data private.

“I realized each individual person shouldn’t have to figure this out on their own,” Jacobs told Recode. “It’s our job as a government to protect this very sensitive and personal data.”

In the weeks since the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, in which the court ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion, questions concerning access to contraceptives in the United States have proliferated. How does the ruling impact birth control? Do states have the power to limit access or ban specific types of contraceptives?

As of mid-July, “things have not changed as of right now,” says Mara Gandal-Powers, the director of birth control access at the National Women’s Law Center. “Everyone still has the constitutional right to birth control. Insurance coverage has not changed for birth control.”

As a fiery viral speech she gave earlier this year made clear, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow isn’t one to mince her words — and she doesn’t want other Democrats to do so either.

McMorrow thinks her party can be a lot more explicit when fighting GOP attacks, particularly as they struggle to defend their congressional majorities and retake state legislatures this fall.

Methotrexate is a fairly common drug that treats a wide range of medical conditions. I take it to help control an autoimmune disorder. So do about 60 percent of rheumatoid arthritis patients. It is used to treat some cancers, such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma. It also has at least one other important medical use.

The drug is the most common pharmaceutical treatment for ectopic pregnancies, a life-threatening medical condition where a fertilized egg implants somewhere other than the uterus — typically a fallopian tube. If allowed to develop, this egg can eventually cause a rupture and massive internal bleeding. Methotrexate prevents embryonic cell growth, eventually terminating an ectopic pregnancy.

In the immediate wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, social media filled with images and memes playing off a viral tweet: A clean-cut couple beams at the camera while standing outside the Supreme Court building and holding a sign reading “We will adopt your baby.” (Slate has the full story on the couple featured in that photo.)

In a post-Roe world, there is already a renewed focus on adoption as a supposed solution for unwanted pregnancies. Indeed, in the arguments before the Supreme Court last year, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that adoption is a foolproof substitution for abortion. Yet the rhetoric around adoption too rarely takes into consideration the person having the baby who will be adopted.

Popular culture tends to focus on a few elements of pregnancy: morning sickness, the growing baby bump, and, of course, mood swings. But that ignores more dangerous, less well-known conditions associated with pregnancy. Up to 10 percent of pregnant US women are diagnosed with gestational diabetes and uncontrolled high blood sugar; untreated, this can result in a difficult delivery, and risks developing into Type 2 diabetes years later. Meanwhile, 2 to 8 percent of women worldwide have symptoms of preeclampsia, a condition involving high blood pressure that can lead to fatal seizures if untreated, can damage the mother’s organs, and increases the risk of chronic disease later in life for the baby.

But even a supposedly normal, healthy pregnancy with no complications can lead to a lot more than just morning nausea. And the ordeal isn’t over when the baby is born; pregnancy changes one’s body permanently, and labor is often traumatic. If it weren’t taken for granted as a natural part of life, pregnancy could easily be considered a chronic illness or disability. Women with pregnancy-related impairments are legally a protected class under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Democrats have repeatedly proposed the same solution: voting in the midterms.

“If you want to change the circumstances for women and ... girls in this country, please go out and vote,” President Joe Biden emphasized in a speech on Friday. “For God’s sake, there’s an election in November.”

In his decision overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Samuel Alito argues that the rulings that had protected abortion rights were not only poorly reasoned but actively harmful to American democracy.

“Far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division,” Alito writes in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

Companies stepping up to say that they will support their workers in accessing abortions after the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade raises questions both logistical and existential. For example, do you really want to ask your boss at Dick’s Sporting Goods for $4,000 and a couple of days off to terminate a pregnancy? If you start to think about the situation beyond the press release, it can get pretty disturbing pretty quickly. It reinforces how supremely screwed up the entire post-Roe situation is, as well as the setup of the United States health care system.

“It’s better than nothing, I’m not going to say it’s bad,” said Kate Bahn, director of labor market policy and chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. “It’s a Band-Aid on a stab wound.”

When the last abortion clinic in Texas closes its doors for good, Prestonwood Pregnancy Center will remain.

So will Agape, with locations in Round Rock, Austin, Cedar Park, and Taylor. So will the Pregnancy Help Center, operating in Texas’s Brazoria County since 1990.

This past weekend, more than 30 Democratic senators had a message for President Joe Biden: They want him to do more to protect abortion rights, and they want him to do it now.

“There is no time to waste,” they said in the letter, which was led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and sent one day after the Supreme Court announced its decision to officially roll back Roe v. Wade. “You have the power to fight back and lead a national response to this devastating decision.”

Editor’s note, June 26: The following is an updated version of an essay that originally ran in Vox in May. We are republishing it with revisions in light of the Supreme Court’s decision overruling Roe v. Wade.

In an 1832 case called Worcester v. Georgia, the Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee Nation constituted a sovereign entity with rights in its territory that cannot be overruled by state governments. President Andrew Jackson, who supported the seizure of Native lands, was infuriated by Chief Justice John Marshall’s ruling, reportedly saying that “Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has made abortion illegal in many parts of the United States, with a possible future where it’s illegal everywhere. The pervasive and barely regulated data collection industry could have a big role to play in investigating and proving cases against people accused of performing or getting abortions.

A lot of data is readily available if law enforcement wants it because there’s very little, legally, restricting its collection. And we know the police use that data all the time, getting it through court order or by simply buying it. Through your phone and your computer, they can find out where you go, who you interact with, what you say, what you search the internet for, which websites you visit, and what apps you download.

The US Supreme Court has officially overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to an abortion. Now the matter will be settled on a state-by-state basis, with 22 states likely to quickly ban all or nearly all abortions.

Even before the Court issued its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Friday, Republican state legislatures across the country had been forging ahead with new bans and restrictions, in anticipation of the decision.

In 1976, just a few years after the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Roe v. Wade, most Americans thought abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances.

Those numbers haven’t changed much over almost 50 years. Most Americans still believe abortion should be legal in most circumstances. But our politics have shifted dramatically. And with the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which effectively overturned Roe — reality has shifted as well. No longer is abortion protected at the federal level.

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade is a development of enormous political and social consequence, one that could could almost immediately trigger tectonic changes in health and well-being.

We know this due to important research published in 2020 that compared the fates of women who were forced to carry pregnancies to term versus those who were provided abortions. The influential Turnaway Study, as it’s commonly known, found that, among other things, women who were denied an abortion endured more serious pregnancy complications, more chronic pain, and more short-term anxiety.

On the weekend of May 7, protesters angered by the leaked draft of a pending Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade assembled in front of Supreme Court justices’ houses. A crowd of a few hundred people first gathered at the house of Justice Brett Kavanaugh before moving over to Chief Justice John Roberts, who lives in the same Chevy Chase, Maryland, neighborhood. The crowd then headed back to Kavanaugh’s house while police guarded properties.

While the protest was peaceful, it caused a firestorm online, where some liberals joined conservatives in condemning the protesters for entering these neighborhoods. On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki released a statement apparently decrying the very idea of protesting the justices. Protesting “should never include violence, threats, or vandalism,” Psaki stated on behalf of President Biden. “Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.”