32.7 abortions happen for every 1,000 women aged 15-44 in Washington, DC yearly.

29.6 in New York
25.8 in New Jersey
23.4 in Maryland
20.6 in Florida
19.5 in California
19.4 in Nevada
19.2 in Connecticut
17 in Rhode Island
16.7 in Delaware

Those are the states/territories in the United States with the highest number of abortions per capita for women ages 15-44.

Comparing that, the top ten lowest.

Wyoming-1.3
South Dakota-3.1
Kentucky-3.8
Idaho-3.9
Missouri-4
Mississippi-4.3
West Virginia-4.4
Utah-4.4
South Carolina-5.3
Nebraska-5.5

Roe v Wade after 50 years might be repealed and obviously a lot of people on both sides have strong feelings on it.

Personally, I am pro choice and believe Roe v Wade was the right decision, but looking at numbers, I’m not sold this as big of a deal as either side wants to make it seem.

Just breaking down what a repeal of Roe v Wade does, it gives states the power to ban abortion, but at the same time, abortion will still be legal in the states that approve it.

There’s really only two ways the federal government could move beyond that.

The Supreme Court bans abortion, determining fetus’s are alive.

That won’t happen, where I’m not even convinced Justice Alito, who is the most pro life justice in the Supreme Court would say yes to that.

Congress bans abortion

That’s a little more possible, but the senate would need 60 votes and Republican’s don’t even have over 50 now. The other issue for that idea is several Republican senators are pro choice and normally the number of pro choice Republicans expands as they win house/senate races, where more people like Senator Scott Brown or Congressman Chris Gibson get elected who are pro choice Republicans.

There’s the slight chance it’d work if the Republicans took power and eliminated the filibuster, similar to what Bernie Sanders proposed last night to ban abortion, but it’d be unlikely either party could even get 51 votes to do what they’d want.

Looking at that, it seems like in a post Roe v Wade America, it’s really just a question of which states are pro life and which states are pro choice.

Looking at the top ten states with the most abortions, the only two that’d possibly ban abortion are Florida and Nevada.

Nevada, is currently represented by a democrat governor and two senators who are democrats. The previous governor was a republican named Brian Sandoval, who was a judge and so socially liberal, former majority leader Harry Reid asked Barack Obama to appoint him to the Supreme Court to replace Antonio Scalia.

Next up is Florida, which that seems more 50/50, but while it’s clearly become a more Republican leaning state, it’s still very culturally liberal and an issue like abortion could be enough to make someone like Ron Desantis, who’s poised for a landslide reelection, to be moved to close call territory. I’d put the odds they ban under 50%.

The other possible one is Washington, DC, which is not technically a state and falls with the federal government for laws like abortion. The consequence of a ban gets tricky there, but they also neighbor Virginia and Maryland, two states extremely unlikely to ever ban abortion and both can be a 20 minute bus ride away for nearly all of DC.

After that, let’s actually look at California, which is the largest state in the country, has a high abortion rate and will never come close to banning abortion.

California has 39 million people.
7.7 million are women ages 15-44.
19.5 abortions per 1,000 women in that age range.

That means 150,000 abortions per year in California.

Just to put that in perspective, more abortions happen in California every year than the top ten lowest abortion states in the country combined.

Which those ten states are all pretty conservative leaning and the only two which might not ban abortion are Missouri and Kentucky, which are two of the larger states there.

Writing this, this is where the data shows Ron v Wade for 50 years, may have been the debate which doesn’t amount to much.

862,000 abortions were reported in 2017.

17% of those alone happened in California, a state which will never ban abortion.

The top ten most pro choice states in the country make up alone about 65-75% of abortions, where the 20-25 states likely to ban abortion if Roe v Wade is repealed don’t make up even one in five.

There’s also no reason to not expect a large percentage of people in states with banned abortion to just travel to a state it’s legal in and get it there.

Which means Roe v Wade being eliminated might not even reduce abortion 10% in the United States.

Which amusing information on this, abortion is actually down about 20% in the United States from 10 years ago.

Over a million abortions happened in 2010, but that number the last four years has been 15-23% lower, which has applied to almost every state and not just the states which added restrictions.

Sex ed in schools
Better access to birth control
Improved healthcare access
Stronger safety net programs for single mothers

All of which lowered abortion rates and by numbers much bigger over what I’d believe Roe v Wade actually reduces it by.

Final point, I’m writing this to be sort of a referee for time and resources.

I‘m pro choice, but don’t actually think the pro life movement has bad people in it.

There tends to be this pretty aggressive call from pro choice people that pro life groups hate women or minorities, which I don’t think is true based on just the sheer number of women/minorities in the pro life movement.

That said though, I think pro life people have wasted 50 years to repeal something which might not even reduce abortion by 10%.