Rachel Rebouché, Greer Donley, and David S. Cohen write:

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, as a draft opinion suggests it will do, the impact on American law will have repercussions beyond Washington or the states set to ban most abortions.

Some conservatives see the Roe opinion as a simple matter of returning the abortion issue to the states, and Justice Samuel Alito’s draft suggests he sees it the same way: “The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion,” he concludes. “Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”

But it’s not that simple.

Our research demonstrates that a post-Roe landscape is far more complicated than most Americans appreciate. Overturning Roe won’t simply kick the matter back to state governments. It will trigger new kinds of battles — among the states, and between states and the federal government — that will strain our federalist system.

If the Court overturns Roe, as the draft opinion indicates will happen, each state will be allowed to set its own abortion policy — banning it entirely or protecting it aggressively. That means roughly half the country will ban abortion and half the country will not. [Continue reading…]