Republican control of Congress and the White House is energizing anti-abortion activists, who want to see Roe v. Wade — the landmark Supreme Court decision affirming women’s right to an abortion — overturned. Congressional Republicans have moved to restrict funding for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, and in the first half of 2017 states considered more than 400 provisions limiting abortions. The shifting political winds are worrying abortion-rights advocates, who won a major victory in the Supreme Court just one year ago, when justices struck down a Texas law that would have closed many abortion clinics. Analysts say the odds have increased that a more conservative high court, buoyed by this year’s arrival of Justice Neil Gorsuch, could further roll back abortion rights.

Rose Ann Schienle demonstrates outside the Planned Parenthood-Colorado Springs Westside Health Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Feb. 11, 2017, as part of a nationwide protest against Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. (Getty Images News/Stringer/Marc Piscotty)

Abortion foes are optimistic that their decades-long effort to severely limit the procedure or even overturn Roe v. Wade could come to fruition, thanks to the GOP’s victories in the 2016 presidential and congressional elections.

During the first half of 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress passed, and President Trump signed, legislation rescinding an Obama administration rule barring states from withholding family-planning grants to Planned Parenthood and other family-planning services that perform abortions. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider. 1