Florida’s six-week abortion ban has come into force, closing the door – for now – on the last abortion access point in the US South.

Anti-abortion campaigners have celebrated the new legislation – which replaces an existing 15-week law – as the gold standard of abortion policy and a major victory in the country’s battle over abortion access.

But pro-choice campaigners say the ban will push an overstretched system to the brink.

They worry the new law in Florida, which had been the last state in the region without a near-total ban, will effectively cut off abortion access for more than 21 million women of reproductive age across nearly a dozen states.

“This essentially creates an abortion desert in the south-east part of our country,” said Michelle Quesada, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida. “This will be devastating.”

But the change may be undone as soon as November, when Floridians will vote on a ballot measure known as Amendment 4, which could protect abortion access until around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Both the new ban and the looming vote have set up perhaps the highest-stakes abortion fight since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago and rescinded the nationwide right to abortion.

After that landmark ruling in June 2022, most Republican-controlled states moved to restrict abortion outright or at six weeks gestation, a point at which many women do not yet know they are pregnant.

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