26 states set to restrict abortion access after Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan joins the Live show to discuss the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Waded, giving all 50 states within the U.S. the power to set their own abortion laws.

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AKIKO FUJITA: The Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade. The ruling gives individual states the power to set their own abortion laws. A sweeping decision here that overturns what essentially has been rights of women for decades. Let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan, who covers the legal issues for us here. And Alexis, obviously, we've been watching what's been playing out in DC. No surprise here. We were expecting protesters to come out the minute this decision came down. But walk us through the implications.

ALEXIS KEENAN: OK, they're huge. There's no easier way to say it than this is just monumental. This is a fundamental change for women's rights in the United States. No longer having a federal or constitutional right to seek out abortion. And what the court was dealing with here was a Mississippi law. It's a state law that was passed, saying that women could no longer seek elective abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Under Roe and Casey, the two laws that were being challenged, Roe being 50-year precedent in the United States, Casey being 30-year precedent in the United States, those laws said that women had the right to obtain an abortion all the way up until a fetus becomes viable. That's, give or take, 24 to 27 weeks. So this is an extreme limitation on women's rights in Mississippi.

And there are 26 other states that are likely or certain to have similar limitations put into place if the Supreme Court handed down this result that it had today. There are 13 states that have trigger laws. Those would go into effect either automatically, given this decision. Some of them just need a governor's signature on the law. But look, this is such a monumental shift for the rights of women here.

And of course, at Yahoo Finance here, we are looking for responses from companies. We're looking to see how this changes, really, corporate policy in the United States. We've already seen some responses. JPMorgan Chase saying that they will pay for travel for women to obtain an abortion if they need to go elsewhere outside of the state where they live. There are many other companies that are taking similar measures and some which took measures well before this decision ever came out.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, and when that leak first came out, that's when we started to really hear from companies who kind of went ahead of this decision to say, this is where our stance is. In terms of the legal issues here, is the fight now really going to happen in the States? What are we likely to see play out?

ALEXIS KEENAN: So, yes, the litigation, I can see it going on forever, right? This is just the beginning of a very long road. But these trigger laws, they're already in place, Akiko. So a lot of these states, the law will change right away, right? It will either change today automatically with this decision, or it will change as soon as the governor signs the new law into place. So, again, that's 26 states. It's more than half of this country is expected to have a change.

And not necessarily all states going all the way to a full ban. Some of them limiting the number of weeks that a woman will have to decide. And again, we're talking about elective abortion. We're not talking about abortions that are needed to save the life of the mother, not talking about medical emergencies here. But this is just such a sweeping change.

I want to read to you just part of the holding here. This is the critical part of the decision. This is written by Justice Samuel Alito. And you have-- this is a party line decision, the conservative justices. This is a 6-3 decision. This is-- I want to read to you what the majority says here. They held, the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey are overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives. That means the right of the states. It will be the states, each individual one will have the right to decide how they want to regulate abortion.

BRIAN CHEUNG: And Alexis, there are so many wide ranging implications of all of this. And what caught my eye also was the dissent from Justices Breyer Sotomayor and Kagan, the three in that 6-3 decision, noting that no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work. Quote, "To the contrary, the court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, procreation." Do you think the decision this morning has extension to other types of work that the Supreme Court might be deciding down the line?

ALEXIS KEENAN: Sure, and look, we just saw the court making kind of some similar arguments that we find in this decision in-- yeah, I think it was yesterday now, in the gun rights case in New York, allowing citizens to carry weapons and not having to make such broad justifications for doing so to have a personal firearm. So, yeah, there's a lot of changes to the core, particularly because of its 6-3 majority now, that is strongly in place, even with Justice Breyer now leaving. So we're seeing a lot of these cases where the rights are certainly shifting across the board.

AKIKO FUJITA: OK, Alexis Keenan, appreciate you staying on top of this. I know you will, throughout the day.