The U.S. Supreme Court effectively overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion decision on Friday as it released its highly anticipated yet still bombshell ruling in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
The decision upends 50 years of federal abortion rights and had been expected after a draft of the ruling was leaked in early May, a rarity for the Supreme Court.
States moved to shore up protections ahead of the widely expected reversal, with Gov. Phil Murphy proposing a bill last month that would expand access and require insurance companies to pay for procedures as he vowed to protect abortion rights.
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Still, hundreds of thousands of Americans, including those in the Garden State, are trying to grasp how the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision affects them. Friday's ruling lets states ban abortion but that doesn't mean they'll be illegal everywhere.
Here's where New Jersey stands right now (check the latest on New York here).
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Abortion Laws in New Jersey After SCOTUS Ruling
In New Jersey, abortion rights are theoretically protected by the Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act, passed and signed into law in Jan. 2021.
One of the most liberal abortion laws in the nation, that act put into state law what the state Supreme Court first ruled many years ago: A woman has the right to an abortion at any time in her pregnancy.
In addition to codifying a woman's right to an abortion, it also included a clause allowing women to come in from out of state for procedures. That detail becomes especially important now that other states may look to criminalize abortion outright.
The law also points toward an eventual requirement that insurance companies pay for the procedure.
According to the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute, 16 states and the District of Columbia have laws that explicitly protect the right to abortion to varying degrees. New Jersey and New York are among them.
