It’s a fresh new year, but the deep, ongoing battle lines drawn among states continue to deepen regarding abortion laws, access and restrictions across the U.S. Incoming President Donald Trump has sworn not to change the federal law regarding abortion and to leave the legal issue of abortion “to the states,” but experts and historians expect plenty of added restrictions implemented in Republican-ruled states in 2025.

Here’s a roundup of the status quo pertaining to abortion rights in the U.S. as of January 2025.

President Donald Trump has said numerous times that he will “not pass a federal abortion ban.” At present, there is no federal law that directly authorizes or restricts abortion. However, since 1977 and continuing to this day, the Hyde Amendment has withheld federal Medicaid funding from abortion across the U.S. This amendment only allows an exception to save the life of the mother and impacts millions of low-income people who rely upon federally funded medical insurance.

From 1973 when Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, access to abortion was legally protected at the federal level within the parameters set out in the landmark court case. But on June 24, 2022, the mostly conservative Supreme Court handed down a decision overturning Roe v. Wade while saying that each state is free to create its own abortion laws.

Abortion laws range among states, from those states that enshrine the right to abortion in their constitution to those that impose near-total bans and those that impose different gestational timelines for when pregnant women can or cannot obtain a legal abortion.

Currently, seven states including Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York have approved ballot measures that either add abortion rights to their state constitutions or create laws that expand and protect abortion access for women.

However, though more states allow abortions, numerous restrictions are still imposed upon women who seek abortions. Planned Parenthood rates states’ abortion laws in regard to abortion rights as mostly accessible; somewhat accessible; restrictions; severely restricted and eliminated.

After June 2022, conservative states quickly began implementing anti-abortion laws. Many of these states created numerous new laws to powerfully restrict abortions in unique ways.

As of the end of December 2024, thirteen states have a near-total abortion ban in place, including Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. In these states, abortion is legal with only some rare exceptions such as incest, rape or a pregnant woman’s health issues.

Additionally, a majority of 26 states have some restrictions regarding abortions. Some states have begun enacting TRAP laws, which stands for Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers. According to Planned Parenthood, these laws purport to protect women’s health by imposing numerous requirements on women’s health centers, but their hidden agenda is to make the requirements so burdensome they cannot be realistically met.

Meanwhile, personhood policies, which give full constitutional rights to a fertilized egg, are becoming popular in Republican states as the new basis for anti-abortion states. Mississippi lost its personhood ballot initiative but proponents say they will try to pass the personhood measure again. States that have passed personhood laws or are planning to pass them include more than a third of U.S. states. Personhood policies could make IVF illegal and cause other complications. Lawmakers in Alabama passed a bill backing personhood, and states such as North Dakota, Missouri and West Virginia have said they may follow suit and change their state laws, including denominating frozen embryos as people with legal rights. More than two dozen bills were introduced in numerous state legislatures in 2024 that support fetal personhood.

Perhaps the most controversial restriction against abortion in U.S. states is the handling by conservative states of abortion pills. Numerous states prohibit the sale, advertising or mailing of such abortion medications to anyone in their state where abortion is banned. The states base their authority to do this on the 1873 Comstock Act, which bans the mailing of obscene matter that can be used to perform abortions.

In a related lawsuit, the state of Texas recently sued a New York doctor who mailed the abortion medication to a patient. New York has vowed to strongly protect the doctor’s rights, and the case is headed to court. This suit is the first battle between an anti-abortion state and a state with shield laws created to protect doctors in legal-abortion states. It is expected the case may head to the Supreme Court.

Faced with fears that medical abortion may become a challenge for even the most liberal states, many healthcare providers are now prescribing the medication, just in case a pregnant woman needs it. About forty states allow doctors to prescribe abortion medicine, but allowing pharmacists to prescribe varies from state to state and is limited to certain medications.

Because pharmacists are regulated by states, the federal government cannot intervene to block them from prescribing specific drugs to patients.

Michael Hogue, chief executive of the American Pharmacists Association, told the New York Times that he believes this trend will grow, as Washington State is offering the first program in the country to prescribe abortion pills.

“I think it is going to expand, and it is expanding,” said Mr. Hogue, adding that it is logical to have “someone so accessible in a local community be able to provide safe access to therapies that might sometimes be difficult to get.”