WASHINGTON, D.C. June 27 (DPI) – Last week’s historic Supreme Court decision to reverse Roe vs. Wade has set off a near panic among abortion rights advocates, with numerous predictions of a return to dangerous, backroom and illegal abortions.

But a closer review of the situation offers a hopeful scenario that safe and legal abortion will remain, not simply in the 13 states where abortion rights are protected, but also in states where the outlook is less clear – and perhaps even in places like Texas and Oklahoma, whose legislatures now seek to outlaw all forms of abortion.

Already, two state courts – in Lousiana and Utah – have blocked efforts by their legislatures to impose immediate bans. Both are among the 8 states most likely to ban abortion.

Yes, the Dobbs decision adds fuel to the fires of political division, at a time when the country appears least able to endure them. And, whatever the decision’s legal merits, a conservative US Supreme Court – seven of its nine jurists are said to be practicing Catholics – is widely regarded as out of step with the more-permissive values of the majority of the population. Only 22 percent of the US population identifies as Catholic today.

Still, various factors suggest there’s a way to restore abortion rights, at least in most states: For starters, the court didn’t ban abortion; it simply threw the issue to the states and its citizens. The justice who wrote the majority opinion, Samuel Alito, spent years – long before Trump appointed three more conservatives to the court – studying Roe vs. Wade and firming up a view that the Constitution played an inappropriate role in abortion rights.

But with future elections, and with future court appointments, the political winds could well shift again. A more liberal court will surely restore abortion rights on a national level.

What’s more, there’s a positive demographic issue, at least for abortion-rights advocates: Anyone under the age of 50 – at least 65 percent of the US population – hasn’t lived without access to a legal abortion. If the states allow plebiscites on the question of access to legal abortion, it strikes many observers that a vote today would easily and overwhelmingly support legal access to abortion in some form.

The question then becomes whether state houses will allow a plebiscite on abortion, and the answer, at least at first blush, is that it’s likely: Conservative politicians may green-light plebiscites on the issue, to deflect from having to take a position on such a contentious matter. “Let the voters decide, so I don’t have to.”

It’s unfortunate, though, that the Supreme Court had to re-open this difficult and divisive can of worms. Many in America thought that abortion, however distasteful and antithetical to many’s beliefs, would remain safe, legal and rare.