Nearly 25 of the 50 states in the US are expected to ban abortion immediately.
The US Supreme Court today ended the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy in a seismic ruling. The ruling puts an end to abortion rights that had been granted to women in the US nearly 50 years ago.
Here are 10 updates on the big story:
The court overturned the landmark 1973 "Roe v Wade" decision that enshrined a woman's right to an abortion and said individual states can permit or restrict the procedure themselves.
The court tossed out the legal argument in Roe v. Wade that women had the right to abortion based on the constitutional right to privacy over their own bodies.
US President Joe Biden called the Supreme Court abortion ruling a 'sad day for the court and the country' which 'took away' Americans' constitutional right.
Hundreds of people, some shedding tears of joy and others weeping with grief, gathered outside the fenced-off Supreme Court, where security was tightened ahead of the ruling.
Nearly 25 of the 50 states in the US are expected to ban abortion immediately.
After the Supreme Court ruling, Missouri became first US state to ban abortion.
Thirteen states, mostly in the conservative and more religious south of the country, have in recent years adopted so-called "trigger" laws to come into force virtually automatically after the decision was handed down.
Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion provider in the United States, vowed following the ruling to "never stop fighting" for those in need.
Former US president Barack Obama slammed the decision by the Supreme Court to throw out the right to abortion in the United States on Friday, calling it an attack on "essential freedoms."
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday called a US Supreme Court ruling ending the federal right to abortion "a big step backwards". "I think it's a big step backwards. I've always believed in a woman's right to choose and I stick to that view, and that's why the UK has the laws that it does," he said.
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