From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tevernice and this is The Daily.

Today, the end of Roe v. Wade appeared to be an unvarnished victory for anti-abortion advocates.

But as my colleague Kate Zernicke found, as the year comes to a close, the realities of a post-war America are turning out differently than anyone had expected.

It's Wednesday, December 14th.

So Kate, it's the end of the year, time for a reflection. And I think it's fair to say that, you know, journalistically, when we look back at 2022, it was the year that Roe v. Wade was overturned.

And it was the year that the country figured out how to operate in that new reality.

And so we wanted to talk through with you where we are right now, like with the benefit of hindsight, what has been the meaning of the country's post-war journey? And where has it left us?

Well, at the highest level, we started off thinking that the overturning of Roe in June was a total victory for the anti-abortion groups.

Those groups had fought Roe for the 50 years that it was an effect. And overturning Roe returned the battle on abortion to the states.

And they had been ready for this ruling. They had all these laws passed that the minute Roe was overturned, these states were going to ban abortion.

I remember that. The trigger law is all of that. Exactly. The trigger laws. But in fact, we're in a really different place nearly six months later.

Yes, 34 million women of reproductive age live in states where abortion is now banned. But now that the battles are playing out not in federal courts, not at the Supreme Court, but on the state level, the rules of the game are different.

And everyone thought that shifting the battle on abortion to the states would help anti-abortion groups. But in fact, what we're seeing is that abortion rights groups are starting to rack up victories in the states.

Okay, so the abortion rights side is actually having some victories, which is surprising. Yes, it is surprising. Okay, so Kate, let's talk through this new landscape you're describing in detail. Like where should we begin?

Well, let's start with ballot initiatives, which are sort of the most direct form of democracy. With a ballot initiative, either the legislature or citizens through a petition, put a measure on the ballot and ask the states voters to, obviously approve of it.

And often this is used to amend state constitutions and ballot initiatives are turning out to be a real point of success for abortion rights groups.

So where have we seen these be successful? Give me some examples.

So in a couple of cases in blue states, there were some expected wins. So in Vermont and California, voters approved ballot initiatives that would explicitly establish a right to abortion in those state constitutions.

So like directly in the language in its state constitution, directly in the language and directly approved by voters.

Okay.

But a more surprising one to me was in Michigan, where we really didn't know what was going to happen after rows overturned in June abortion rights supporters in Michigan had rushed to get an initiative on the ballot there that would amend the state constitution to say the state of Michigan explicitly protects a right to abortion.

So what happened? I think abortion rights groups went in feeling pretty confident about Michigan, but it was definitely not a sure thing. Michigan has a Democratic governor, Democratic Attorney General, but the legislature was controlled by Republicans.

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