Though this decision will have an immediate chilling effect in conservative states, the fact is these states have been restricting access for decades by placing increasingly difficult conditions on clinics offering the service.
More strident activists have bombed facilities and murdered specialists, but bureaucratic opponents have been tying services up in legal battles, exhausting their resources in the courts to force agencies to give up offering the procedure.
Kentucky's last two clinics were already closed down prior to the Supreme Court ruling due to a sweeping state bill that forced a 15-week abortion ban, and extensive restrictions on medication for abortion – including barring it by mail, and more.
States such as Alaska, Mississippi, West Virginia, Texas, and Kansas, have laws requiring abortion providers to warn patients of a link between abortion and breast cancer, and to issue other scientifically unsupported warnings.
The question for New Zealand isn't whether abortion should be illegal - we have long since parted ways with that proposition. The issue is one of access.
As we have seen in all areas of healthcare, particularly in the current sweep of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 with seasonal surges in flu and colds, services can be overrun by circumstances.
While we are entitled to debate abortion from any of our personal perspectives, the New Zealand Parliament has voted on a conscience basis that it is not illegal and is a health matter.
We know that some of New Zealand's politicians hold personal pro-life views. One of them may be the next prime minister. Twenty-six of the 51 MPs who voted against the Abortion legislation Act in 2020 are still in Parliament.
However, we have assurances that the law will not be changed with a subsequent shift in governing party, and that would fit the rationale of the centrist majority of our electorate.
What needs defending in New Zealand is not the law, it's the provision of the procedure, as well as the counselling and support to offer fair treatment to all who are entitled to it.
The World Health Organisation has estimated about 47,000 women globally die each year from unsafe abortions - caused by restricted access to services. A further five million suffer a disability.
The fractured approach in the United States, of undermining services through protest and legal means, leading to gross inequities of care, should not be permitted a look-in here.
A Health Ministry survey conducted last year revealed inconsistencies in abortion services provided across New Zealand. There is still some way to go to offer an adequately trained workforce and accessible services.
That is where New Zealand's abortion battlelines lie.
