HOUSTON — Deep rifts have emerged among the hundreds of elected district attorneys who will be charged with enforcing the expanding restrictions on abortion, creating a Balkanized new legal system within states that are banning the procedure.

Dozens of Democratic prosecutors who represent liberal pockets in conservative states have vowed to resist bans by refusing to bring charges against abortion providers. But in many rural areas and outlying suburbs, conservative prosecutors have said they will enforce their state’s bans.

An opening salvo came days after the Supreme Court last month struck down the right to abortion, when a prominent Texas anti-abortion group urged police and prosecutors in Dallas and Houston to open criminal investigations into three abortion clinics that the group said were preparing to violate the law by scheduling abortions.

“It is your duty to uphold the law and investigate crimes,” the group, Texas Right to Life, said in its letter, in which it claimed to have phone recordings of clinic employees.

The demand was made moot when a judge temporarily blocked attempts to resurrect the state’s long-dormant, century-old abortion law in the weeks before a new ban takes effect, but it marked the beginning of an explosive new battle over abortion in America: how prosecutors and the police will enforce laws that criminalize abortion in two dozen states, some of them carrying penalties of up to 15 years in prison.

More than 80 elected prosecutors have already vowed not to. In a joint statement released after the Supreme Court’s decision, they said enforcing abortion bans on what had for decades been a legal medical procedure would degrade public trust, especially for sexual assault victims, and drain resources from prosecuting what they called serious crimes.

“Criminalizing and prosecuting individuals who seek or provide abortion care makes a mockery of justice,” the prosecutors said. “Prosecutors should not be part of that.”

But such protection could be limited. In some states with abortion restrictions, Republican attorneys general could intercede to bring abortion cases even if local prosecutors refuse. In Texas, where district attorneys in five of the state’s most populous counties have said they will not “criminalize personal health care decisions,” a Republican legislator has proposed a law that could empower conservative rural prosecutors to charge urban residents for violating Texas’ abortion laws.

Other schisms are erupting.

In Michigan, abortion providers could soon face felony charges under an abortion ban that has remained on the books since 1931. But Karen McDonald, the Oakland County prosecuting attorney, said the law was useless and antiquated, comparing it to old statutes banning cows running at large. She said she would not enforce an abortion ban.

But next door in Macomb County, prosecutor Peter Lucido, a Republican, has said publicly that he would enforce the ban if it is upheld in court. The law has been suspended by a state judge after challenges from abortion rights groups.

And in Grand Rapids, the Kent County prosecutor vowed to enforce the 1931 ban and prosecute doctors, saying he would not “turn a blind eye” and ignore what he called a valid law.

It is unlikely that even the most vociferous promises of protection from Democratic prosecutors will persuade abortion clinics to remain open in defiance of state bans. So far, there have been few concrete actions by prosecutors, in part because many abortion clinics in states that had adopted bans quickly stopped providing services after the high court’s ruling.

“I believe that most providers, and certainly Planned Parenthood, intend to follow the law,” said Helene Krasnoff, vice president for public policy litigation and law at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. At the same time, she said, some people will violate the bans because “patients are going to be desperate.”

Abortion rights groups said there could be serious consequences if law enforcement officials moved to aggressively investigate and prosecute abortions as crimes.

While existing laws largely exempt women who get abortions, defense lawyers and abortion rights groups are worried that zealous prosecutors could bring cases against anyone who helps them get abortions, or abortion pills. Advocates say the 2014 case of a Pennsylvania mother who was jailed for ordering abortion pills for her teenage daughter is a harbinger.

“It’s open season,” said C. Melissa Owen, a criminal defense lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina, who has studied laws criminalizing abortion. “Best friends, aunts, mothers, boyfriends, receptionists, nurses — anyone providing care or assistance falls under the umbrella of being a co-conspirator.”

In Oklahoma, where an abortion ban from the moment of fertilization went into effect June 24, Attorney General John O’Connor promised that there would be immediate enforcement, including against those who “solicit” abortions, and said that could include companies that have said they would support employees traveling out of state for abortions.

“I would say if you put up a billboard, or if you advertise that you’re going to provide abortions in Oklahoma or in another state, that you’re soliciting an abortion,” O’Connor said.

Abortion rights researchers say prosecutors have for years employed homicide and child abuse laws to charge women who induce abortions, suffer miscarriages or use drugs during pregnancy.

Some 1,300 women have faced such charges or arrests since 2006, according to National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

The Supreme Court’s Roe decision could also put new muscle into “personhood” laws that give full legal rights to embryos from the earliest stage of development. Abortion rights groups fear that pregnant women could be at greater legal risk of being charged with homicide or child abuse if they miscarry, induce an abortion themselves or use recreational drugs or prescription medication during pregnancy.

There are also privacy worries that prosecutors will subpoena women’s medical records and private social media files as part of criminal investigations into abortion providers. Some abortion rights advocates have urged women to delete apps that track menstrual cycles for fear their data could end up in a law enforcement dragnet.

“The women themselves are the source of evidence, whether it’s their body through exams or insisting on testimony and putting them up for public testimony in court,” said Leslie Reagan, a professor of history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who has looked at how abortion was criminalized before Roe v. Wade. “Women were punished by the state through that interrogation process.”