Anti-abortion movement achieved goal of reversing Roe – but it is far from done

The anti-abortion movement has historically been among the best organized factions in American politics, and for decades has had a seemingly singular goal: overturn Roe v Wade.

Last week, that was accomplished and as the anti-abortion movement celebrated its victory via the US supreme court, one question has emerged: what will they do next?

The court's conservative supermajority reversed the landmark 1973 decision, which had granted US women the federal right to terminate a pregnancy. The end to the constitutional right almost immediately led more than half a dozen states to ban the procedure. In the coming weeks and months, more than half of US states are expected to institute severe restrictions or outright bans.

But that does not mean the end of the movement. Far from it, in fact.

"There still is a singular goal," said Mary Ziegler, a historian of abortion laws in the US, a visiting law professor at Harvard, and recent author of Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment. That goal "has never been the overruling of Roe" but fetal personhood - a legal concept that would establish "some kind of recognition of fetal rights".

Global healthcare groups and human rights advocates have called the US court's decision "an unconscionable attack" on the health and rights of US women and girls, warned it will cause a global chilling effect on reproductive healthcare, and that abortion bans and forced birth will exacerbate already egregious maternal mortality disparities in the US.

Nevertheless, the anti-abortion movement has made clear its work is not done. But how to set about achieving the next goal - a total end to abortion in the US - depends on who you ask.