For obvious reasons, many millions of Americans are more than a little concerned about the prospect. One of them is Carol Sanger, a professor at Columbia University Law School and the author of About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in 21st Century America. We've spoken before, and as recently as last year, she told me SCOTUS would sooner back off its 2016 decision in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt—the ruling that clarified how states couldn't place an undue burden on women seeking abortions—than go after Roe. Since then, of course, Trump has confirmed a far-right justice who is widely believed to be hostile to Roe in Neil Gorsuch , and nominated another in Kavanaugh. These days, Washington Post columnists are calling a full-on reversal of Roe an inevitability.

In case you need a refresher, the 1973 ruling decreed, among other things, that a woman's right to privacy under the 14th Amendment made any state law banning all abortions unconstitutional. If the decision were reversed, then states would again get to decide whether or not to allow women to terminate pregnancies in the abstract. And, depending on the scope of the ruling, some states might prohibit the procedure in every circumstance—even those involving rape or incest or to protect the life of the mother.

When he nominated far-right jurist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court , Donald Trump took another step toward keeping one of the more shameless promises he made as a candidate. He may not have built his wall or drained the proverbial swamp—in fact, DC is dirtier than ever . But it's starting to look like American women losing the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy isn't a matter of if, but when. That's because once Congress confirms Kavanaugh—which it is all but certain to do—pro-life crusaders will have a court that is more hostile to Roe v. Wade than any that preceded it.

If and when Kavanaugh is confirmed, he'll join Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito as the fourth justice to believe the Constitution remains a set of fixed rules for America that cannot be re-interpreted despite the world being a rather different place in 2018 than it was in 1787. Meanwhile, "activist judges," as conservatives like to call anyone who isn't a strict originalist, believe (or at least aren't repulsed by the idea that) the Constitution is a living-and-breathing document; the Court includes four such jurists in Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Finally, there's Chief Justice John Roberts—undoubtedly a very conservative judge who ultimately represents a bit of a wildcard . On paper, he's a practicing Catholic whose wife was previously involved in a pro-life feminist group, has been touted by conservatives as Originalist, was in the minority on Whole Women's Health, and even signed a 1990 brief arguing that Roe was wrong.

In order for pro-life activists to reverse Roe, they need to ensure an abortion-related case is actually argued before the Supreme Court. There are two particularly plausible ways for that to happen, according to Sanger. One has to do with so-called "dismemberment" abortions—which are banned in Mississippi and West Virginia—the legality of which is now being disputed in South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court in Louisiana is currently deciding whether or not abortion doctors need to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Although those in favor say keeping a woman taking an abortion pill under a doctor's watch is for her own good, those opposed say it would place an unnecessary and undue burden on people who want pregnancies terminated. (Making it difficult and expensive to obtain access to abortion under the guise of safety is a common pro-life tactic, though the Supreme Court ruled against a similar maneuver in the aforementioned 2016 case.)

But how does a Supreme Court case like Roe getting overturned play out in practice? And what would happen in the minutes, hours, months, and even years after a Supreme Court intern ran across the plaza to deliver such a decision to the masses? To find out, I caught up with Sanger and some other experts who helped me game out the legal, social, and economic repercussions.

But according to Sanger, the fate of abortion all comes down to where Roberts falls down on the hallowed principle of stare decisis, or the idea that precedents shouldn't be overruled unless there's an extremely good reason. One relevant precedent came from the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which SCOTUS said it wouldn't be fair to overturn Roe, in part because an "entire generation" of women had come to rely on the idea of abortion being legal and had subsequently planned lives and careers around that fact.

"[Roberts] has some concern about if his court is gonna be the one that overturns Roe," Sanger told me. "He could well say that while he might not have approved of Roe in the first place, in the 40 years since the decision was made, we've now had two generations of people who have grown up thinking that abortion is legal in America. And we'd really be pulling out the rug from under people if we flipped on that now."

Step 2: Police close clinics, and abortion becomes a crime in at least four states

But if Roe is overturned, it will be up to each individual state to decide if they want to allow abortion, and when. There are nine states that have constitutional protections on the books right now meant to protect a woman's right to choose in at least some cases, but there are also nine that never repealed their abortion bans after the Supreme Court rendered them obsolete. Others are in a kind of middle-ground, and still more have already actively anticipated the day there might be another landmark abortion case.

"Some of the states have said, 'We want to be absolutely ready for a Roe reversal case, and we don't want to have to wait for the legislature,'" Sanger told me. "And, surprise, surprise, the really nasty states have put laws into effect saying that the second Roe is reversed, a criminal statute springs into effect."

These so-called trigger laws exist in Louisiana, Mississippi, and North and South Dakota. That means any clinic there would be shut down, one way or another, and fast. Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, told me how it would play out in each: For instance, the law in Louisiana says that the state will ban abortion if Roe is reversed in such a way as to allow states to ban abortion or if the US Constitution is amended to allow states to ban abortion. Things are much more straightforward in the other three. Mississippi will ban abortion (except when the woman's life is at risk, or she was impregnated during a rape) ten days after the state attorney general certifies that Roe was overturned, while North Dakota would ban abortion (with exceptions for the mother's life, as well as rape and incest cases) as soon as a state legislative council approved a recommendation from the state attorney general that the abortion ban was considered constitutional. Meanwhile, South Dakota would criminalize abortion (except for cases in which the mother's life was at risk) the second states were allowed to do so.