‘We’re About to Become a Divided Country’: NBC’s Pete Williams Lays Out Consequences of Overturning Roe

NBC News correspondent Pete Williams said the United States is about to become a “divided country” while spelling out the consequences of the Supreme Court ruling overturning the right to abortion established almost 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade.

By removing the Constitutional protection for abortion, the ruling allows states to determine their own restrictions on the procedure. About half the states have already said they will ban abortion.

“This is the first time the Supreme Court has ever granted a constitutional right, which it did so when Roe was decided in 1973, and then took it away,” Williams said. “A popular right that was widely recognized.”

Williams explained what this decision — which overturned two rulings, Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood — means for abortion in America.

“Those two rulings stood for the proposition that states could not ban abortion before the age of viability,” Williams said. “They could restrict it during that period up to about 23 weeks, but they couldn’t ban it.”

“Now, the Supreme Court has taken that guarantee away,” he said.

Williams noted that 13 states passed “trigger laws” which would make abortion illegal once the Supreme Court made its decision.

In a few of those states, Williams said, the bans take effect immediately. In others, the ban will come as soon as the Supreme Court decision is certified by state attorney generals.

States that have not passed trigger laws are expected to move to ban abortion in the wake of this decision.

“In roughly half the country, abortion is as of now or soon will be illegal,” Williams said. “We are about to become a divided country, where abortion is legal in about half the states, illegal in half the states.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.