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The Intercept
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
Beyond Dobbs: How Abortion Bans Enforce State-Sanctioned Violence
Since the Supreme Court's landmark June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade and federal abortion protections, a wave of state legislatures have rushed to impose bans and restrictions. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 41 states now have abortion bans in effect, including 12 with total bans. 'We hear about the endless, supposedly unintentional consequences of abortion bans like rising maternal mortality, child rape victims forced to travel across state lines, increased risk of criminalization, pregnant victims coerced by their abusers, all of that,' says journalist Kylie Cheung, author of 'Coercion: Surviving and Resisting Abortion Bans.' 'But I very much argue that these aren't unintended consequences.' This week on The Intercept Briefing, Cheung joins host Jessica Washington to trace the direct line from the Dobbs decision to state-sanctioned gender-based violence and control. 'This is what abortion bans function to do, which is to police and control pregnant people, to feed cycles of abuse, to be this tool in the toolbox of abusers. To enact racial violence and economic subjugation and essentially lower women and pregnant people and people who can become pregnant to this lowered class in our society,' says Cheung. 'And that is not unintentional at all. Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Transcript Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I'm Jessica Washington. A year after the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision — reversing Roe v. Wade and erasing decades of precedent enshrining the right to abortion — a Nebraska teenager was sentenced in connection to her abortion. Her arrest, which largely hinged on Facebook messages between the teen and her mother — garnered international attention. In court, the then 18-year-old who was only 17 at the time of her abortion, testified that she'd been in an abusive relationship and was scared of sharing a child with her abuser. 'I was honestly scared at the time,' she told District Court Judge James Kube. 'I didn't know what to do.' Despite her pleas, the judge seemingly dismissed her concerns over the abuse. In July 2023, she was sentenced to 90 days in prison for 'illegally concealing human remains' and received an additional two years of probation. Her mother, who'd helped her obtain the abortion medication, was also sentenced to two years in prison. The Nebraska teen's case is just one of countless examples of how survivors of domestic violence find themselves crushed between the intersection of abortion bans, fetal personhood laws, and the criminal legal system in the post-Dobbs era. Joining me now is Kylie Cheung, a journalist covering gender and power, and author of 'Coercion: Surviving and Resisting Abortion Bans,' her new book connecting the through lines between the Dobbs decision and state-sanctioned gender-based violence and control. Welcome to the show, Kylie. Kylie Cheung: Thank you so much for having me. JW: I want to start with this quote in your book that really hit me. You share this quote from Sara Ainsworth, senior legal and policy director at the reproductive justice legal organization If/When/How, about the reality of survivors living in states with abortion bans. She said, 'You live in a state where you're more likely to be criminalized than the person who's abusing you. It's devastating.' That's a really haunting statement. Kylie, what is the reality for survivors trying to access abortion care in states with fetal personhood laws and/or abortion bans? KC: That quote definitely really stayed with me too and there were some lawmakers, I believe, in Missouri who are trying to raise awareness about how you couldn't finalize a divorce while you're pregnant in that state. And I think what people need to know is that homicide is a leading cause of death for pregnant people and during pregnancy you might either experience abuse for the first time or abuse will escalate. And we also know that — because of incredible research projects like the Turnaway study, which tracked over the course of several years how the lives of people who sought but were unable to access abortion care — what the impacts were for the rest of their lives. And in addition to being at much greater risk of poverty or being pushed deeper into poverty, we saw that long-term domestic violence was also a much, much bigger risk, which makes sense as someone may be forced or entrapped within a relationship with an abusive partner. I also was able to speak to several people who were forced to carry rape-induced pregnancies or carry children with their rapists. And sometimes that is a choice, and sometimes it is not a choice under these laws where we already have seen: There were research estimates that at least, or around 65,000 rape-induced pregnancies had occurred in 14 states that had banned or almost banned abortion. And in most of those states, there were no exceptions for rape attached to the bans. And just within one year of Dobbs in the summer of 2023, the National Domestic Violence Hotline said that they'd received double the number of calls about reproductive coercion compared to the year before. Just last month, there was another study that showed there were 9,000 more incidents of domestic violence after Dobbs in states that had banned abortion. So we saw that these laws were associated with higher risk of intimate partner violence-related homicide. And the so-called 'beautiful bill' or the budget bill that passed, if that provision that defunds abortion providers is allowed to stand, I think Planned Parenthood has estimated that 1 in 4 abortion providers across the country could be forced to shut down. But you know, what we really see is the abuser and the state occupying this conjoined role. JW: Yeah, I'm really glad that you wrote about this. So often domestic violence is left out of this narrative. And I think, you and I've covered this now for a while, [we] know how central it is to kind of everything that we're talking about in reproductive justice. One of the cases you dig into is the story of the Nebraska teenager who was imprisoned after having an abortion, and whose claims of domestic violence were seemingly ignored in her sentencing. But when I was researching for this episode, I found that most news outlets didn't mention the alleged abuse. Why did you choose to highlight that aspect of her story, and why do you think so many news outlets didn't? KC: There are so many takeaways, and there's so much about that specific case that are horrifying and dystopian. Like, for example, it fell into the pattern of what we often see, which is that so often people are reported to police by acquaintances, by neighbors, by community members. And then you also see her text messages — like her digital history and that way — via Meta were also used. And that raised a lot of questions about the extent to which Big Tech and these social platforms and corporations are going to participate. On a personal level, what stood out to me the most was that she had the abortion because she was in an abusive relationship. Hold on. I'm trying to pull up the quote from the judge because it upset me a lot, honestly, where he said, 'I don't get the impression, from reading all the reports in the pre-sentence investigation report, that there was some kind of physical health issue that was going on. I tried to talk to you about that a little bit, and you confirmed that you just didn't want this baby. You didn't want this pregnancy based on the person that got you pregnant.' I mean, that quote, it just angered me so much — the way that I could just lose sleep thinking about it because there's so many different layers to that. For one thing, he said, 'You just didn't want this pregnancy.' Why isn't that enough for one thing? And, 'You didn't want this pregnancy based on the person that got you pregnant.' JW: Yeah, I remember that quote. That really stood out to me. I'm glad you included that in your book and brought that up now because I think that quote is really important for people to hear. I want to talk about some of the other stories, though, from your book. I think some of the most powerful and haunting stories that I read in your book were about women who were effectively held against their will in hospitals over perceived risks to their fetuses, and in some cases allegedly forced into medical procedures such as having a C-section. Many of these cases predate the Dobbs decision. Are you able to talk about some of these cases or one of these cases? And also how is this legal? KC: What we've seen so far is that more and more hospitals and doctors in response to someone experiencing pregnancy complications that could vary straightforwardly and safely and simply be alleviated with an emergency abortion, instead, we've seen cases where doctors feel that they have to perform a much more complicated procedure, a much more invasive procedure, or C-sections instead of these emergency abortions to alleviate pregnancy complications or remove remains from a non-viable pregnancy via C-section, which can come with greater risk of fertility loss, and can come with greater risk of complications, and is obviously much more invasive and has a much greater recovery time. And the most important thing, obviously, is that people experiencing these complications probably don't want that procedure performed on them if they could have the much simpler and safer emergency abortion. And to your point, I think this history of hospitals holding people against their will, I think what's really interesting is some of that stems from these power dynamics between patients and provider obviously. Our health care system is very complicated, and a lot of patients go into this space not knowing their rights. And health care providers, hospitals know that and exploit that, and that's incredibly unfortunate. And then the other thing is when we accord fetuses or embryos personhood status, that is inherently at odds with the pregnant person's rights. When there's that separation, that renders the pregnant person exponentially more vulnerable to state violence and policing of behaviors that otherwise wouldn't be an issue if they weren't pregnant. And we see that so often with criminalization cases — I've spoken to experts at the wonderful organization, Pregnancy Justice, which provides legal representation and support to people who are experiencing criminalization related to pregnancies. One expert I spoke to told me that about 97 percent of cases they've worked on involving pregnancy-related criminalization, it wasn't under abortion bans or you're charged with having an abortion. It was for manslaughter, feticide, child endangerment, abuse of a corpse, all of these laws that are weaponized and misapplied to fetuses. And you know, to allow the state to control the behaviors of the pregnant person — behaviors that otherwise would not be criminalized. JW: And I think that's a really important point, and you make this point in the book, and I think it's worth reiterating. It's not so much that these hospitals have the right to hold these women against their will but the system is so confusing that people don't know when they're told, you know, 'you can't leave,' they don't know that they have the right to do that. And I want to talk about a case that you mentioned that really shocked me. It was the case of Tara Rule. So Tara Rule sued her provider, who she alleges denied her medication for severe cluster headaches just because she was of 'childbearing age' and the medication could cause a hypothetical fetus to have birth abnormalities. Her provider has denied essentially all of her claims about what happened, and the lawsuit is ongoing. You interviewed Tara for Jezebel back in 2023. What did she make of a potential fetus being prioritized over a living person? How should we try to understand this case? KC: The framework of fetal personhood stretch out beyond there even being a fetus or embryo present in reality to just hypotheticals about someone's future fertility, someone's future children. The end game of fetal personhood, which is very much rooted in dehumanizing the woman, the pregnant person, even just the pregnant capable person. There are some scholars who've developed the term zero trimester where we live in this culture where even if you're not pregnant or you don't want to be, it's just assumed you're going to be someday. And one more thing specific to Tara Rule's case. I think it's shocking and deeply upsetting and her condition is so painful that it's associated with higher risk of suicide. And the treatments are very few and far between, but she was told by this doctor, this surgeon that yes there is a treatment that could help, but it would impact your fertility. And she didn't want to have kids and her partner didn't want to have kids and she was told point blank that if she were not of childbearing age then they would give it to her. But I think that at the same time that I spoke to her, there were numerous other cases of children, like actual children who suffered from these different conditions that required medications that were deemed to be abortifacient, so their pharmacists wouldn't prescribe them. We hear about the endless, supposedly unintentional consequences of abortion bans like rising maternal mortality, child rape victims forced to travel across state lines, increased risk of criminalization, pregnant victims coerced by their abusers, all of that. But I very much argue that these aren't unintended consequences. This is what abortion bans function to do, which is to police and control pregnant people, to feed cycles of abuse, to be this tool in the toolbox of abusers. To enact racial violence and economic subjugation and essentially lower women and pregnant people and people who can become pregnant to this lowered class in our society. And that is not unintentional at all. JW: Yeah, I think framing it that way is really powerful when we're talking about these exceptions and we're talking about, 'Oh, well, we didn't mean to do this and that.' Read Our Complete Coverage [Break] JW: I want to jump into some more recent news. In June, the Trump administration rescinded Biden-era guidance directing hospitals that take Medicare to provide stabilizing abortion care to patients in medical emergencies as required by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. What impact will rescinding this have on pregnant people? KC: Even when Biden was in office, it was just pure chaos in terms of, yes, we have these laws, and state abortion bans might on paper have these very questionable and deliberately nebulous exceptions. But what the Trump administration did with rescinding that guidance, I mean we're seeing a lot of these horrific cases even when we had that guidance in place. And I think it's just very disturbing to see that this administration is effectively trying to green light or give the OK for hospitals to further neglect and endanger their patients' lives in this way. Under federal law there should be no ambiguity where there is just a requirement, whether someone's pregnant or not, where you provide that stabilizing care. You know, I think that we've already seen ProPublica's reporting on at least five cases of women who have died as a result of not being able to receive timely emergency abortion care. And the problem that arose was these hospitals were so afraid of — it's so morbid and dehumanizing and disgusting — but is she close to death enough for us to operate where we won't go to prison? And the fact is that people are going to die because of pregnancy complications and something like sepsis, that arises when you are not able to remove remains from a non-viable pregnancy for too long and they stay there in the uterus. There is no linear timeline of what someone's condition will be when they're experiencing that. It could be, they might seem kind of stable and then within minutes are on the brink of death. And when we're using this wait and see approach, that is just fundamentally incompatible with providing this kind of care. And the other thing is, even if someone does survive, their long-term health could be severely impacted. Their lifespan could be shortened. Maybe they want to continue to have children, but their fallopian tube collapsed from sepsis and their fertility is severely impacted. We've seen several cases of that in Texas in the lawsuit where these women who nearly died from Texas's abortion ban sued; just asking for clarity in the supposed exceptions in Texas's ban. And the state Supreme Court dismissed their case. And it's just horrific. JW: And I don't want to spoil too much of your book, but I think another really important thing that you get into there is kind of how states are trying to hide some of this maternal death data, and trying to not make these connections between these abortion bans and maternal deaths. I want to continue on some recent news. What are you following in the reproductive health space? What are you covering that you think people should be paying attention to? KC: Yeah, I mean that's a great question. I just recently moved to working at the Abortion Every Day newsletter that Jessica Valenti started a few years ago. And when you are reporting on abortion every day, you see all of these different trends or these different strategies that anti-abortion lawmakers are deploying. A strategy I think we're very much seeing among the anti-abortion movement is this pivot to framing or just equating taking abortion pills with coercion and abuse. Like those are the words and the allegations they really want to make. I mean, look at earlier this year in Louisiana where there was a mother who it seems or allegedly ordered abortion pills from a doctor in New York that she gave to her daughter. That is the narrative that they are just going with and calling the provider a drug dealer who victimized the child, I believe is the quote from like the Louisiana Attorney General. So co-opting and weaponizing terms like coercion and abuse when the reality is abortion bans are creating all of these new vulnerabilities for actual abuse victims. Texas had introduced a bill to require wastewater plants to test for abortion pill remains or whatnot. When the FDA approved abortion [pills] over two decades ago, they had an environmental impact report already. And there is no environmental impact of taking abortion pills. So we saw that bill in Texas, but there was a bill introduced in Congress that's also about infringing on access to abortion pills by suggesting that people are contaminating the water systems by having them. And that is just not true at all. JW: I want to talk about the history aspect of your book, and specifically the modern connections between the white supremacist movement and anti-abortion movements in the United States. How do these two movements align and which groups are most impacted by these bans? KC: Yeah, absolutely. A book that I read, toward the end of writing this was, 'Liberating Abortion' by Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone. They excavate so much history that we have not been told before. And not necessarily even because it was very hard to find, but because journalists simply were not looking for the stories of women of color and certainly Black women who were providing and receiving abortion care on their own terms throughout history. Abortion bans and abortion restrictions always have carried the greatest harm and impact on people of color and communities of color, and build on this very long history of state violence against these communities. Under white supremacy and under capitalism, communities of color often have the least resources that are increasingly being required to navigate all of these massive barriers to travel and access abortion and cover all of those different costs. And so when we have these laws that further shroud pregnancy itself in criminal suspicion where, pregnancy itself under abortion bans what's implicit in that is that all of our pregnancies are now effectively just shrouded in this criminal risk and potential for state surveillance and punishment. And, that very obviously carries disproportionate vulnerability among women of color, among Black women, among Indigenous women. All of that is to say, when we operate at the nexus of criminalization and state reproductive coercion and pregnancy policing, it's very clear who is going to be targeted. JW: I think covering this issue for a while, one thing you notice is when people don't mention racism and white supremacy, a lot of their coverage in theory kind of begins and ends at Roe and Dobbs and ignores this long history. And this is kind of personal, so bear with me on this, but this is obviously a pretty white space covering reproductive health, covering reproductive justice. Do you think that because you're coming from a non-white perspective, you are seeing things, you are talking about things that are often missed in this space? KC: That's a really great question. Definitely. And there have been a lot of different tensions and frustrations within the space of people who work within reproductive rights and justice. And I have spoken to a lot of people who are maybe the rank and file at some of these larger organizations and have felt very understandably frustrated. At the end of the day, I guess, whether I realize it or not, I am very much guided by who I am and obviously what I care deeply about. JW: Yeah. Thank you, Kylie. I've been impressed watching your career for a while now, your ability to combine these issues, to weave them in and out. To me, reproductive justice can never just be coverage of abortion. It can never just be coverage of birth control or one thing. This unified theory of reproductive justice is really important. And having people in this space who talk about that is so critical. And I want to touch on something else that you said earlier. You were kind of talking about the abortion hierarchy. I think one thing I know we both think about when covering this issue is: How do we get people to care, and how do we highlight abortion stories that get people's attention without reinforcing this hierarchy or this idea that some abortions are morally justified and others aren't? How did you approach that when writing this book, and how do you approach that in your reporting? KC: Drawing on my background of reporting and writing about gender-based violence is so often we're told there are — implicitly or explicitly — that there are good victims or bad victims, and we're similarly told that there are good abortions and bad abortions. What's so important, or what I really try to emphasize is despite these like innately sexist and surface level supposed distinctions under rape culture, under abortion, bans, all survivors and all abortion-seekers are dehumanized and denied agency. JW: You know, this is someone I think we've both interviewed before, Oriaku Njoku who used to run the National Network of Abortion Funds. To me, they said joy is essential to covering this, to being a part of this movement. Reproductive justice requires you to have joy because you have to be able to believe in a better world. You can't just focus on kind of the bleak aspects of this work. And so I wanted to ask you, when you're covering this, when you're in this movement, what are you looking for? How are you finding joy? KC: We see every day that absolutely none of this is survivable without community. These conditions that we're all being put under are horrible, but it just has been incredibly beautiful to see the ways that people will step in to help each other and bridge those needs, even when we see so many cases of anti-abortion leaders in the state trying to make an example of this person or that person. That will never be enough to make people stop wanting to help each other, and that I think is really beautiful. JW: Yeah, it's a beautiful closing message, and we're going to leave it there. But thank you so much for joining me on the Intercept Briefing, Kylie. KC: Thank you so much for having me and for all the amazing work that you all do. JW: That does it for this episode of The Intercept Briefing. We want to hear from you. Share your story with us at 530-POD-CAST. That's 530-763-2278. You can also email us at podcasts@ This episode was produced by Truc Nguyen. Laura Flynn is our Supervising Producer. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by Shawn Musgrave. Slip Stream provided our theme music. You can support our work at Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven't already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And tell all of your friends about us, and better yet, leave us a rating or a review to help other listeners find us. Until next time, I'm Jessica Washington. Thanks for listening.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
On Dobbs anniversary, Mass. pols warn of attack on abortion rights in Trump's ‘Big Beautiful Bill'
It's been three years since the U.S. Supreme Court toppled Roe v. Wade in a ruling that sent the fight over abortion rights back to the states, resulting in laws that restricted or banned access to the procedure for millions of people nationwide. And just in time for Tuesday's anniversary of the high court's ruling in a case formally known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Republicans on Capitol Hill are launching another assault that would result in a de facto nationwide ban on abortion even in states where the procedure remains safe and legal. The four women members of the Bay State's Capitol Hill delegation — U.S. Reps. Lori Trahan, D-3rd District. Katherine Clark, D-5th District, and Ayanna Pressley, D-7th District, along with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., gathered at Planned Parenthood's offices on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston on Monday to deliver that message. " Dobbs showed us [that] the unthinkable can happen,' Dominique Lee, the president of the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts, who joined the lawmakers Monday, said during that news conference. "And now it is our turn to show them what we are capable of because our vision is stronger than their hate, and our future is still ours to shape," Lee, who helms the state branch of Planned Parenthood's political wing, added. Here's how that would happen: Language tucked into President Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' would ban insurance plans offered under the Affordable Care Act from covering abortion care in certain states, according to an analysis by the National Women's Law Center. It also would effectively defund Planned Parenthood by blocking Medicaid reimbursements to the reproductive health organization, which also offers screenings for cancer and sexually transmitted infections and access to contraception among its services, Lee said Monday. Of the 30,000 patients that Planned Parenthood serves statewide in Massachusetts, about 40% are on Medicaid. If Trump signs it in its current form, the bill would 'wipe out' nearly half of Planned Parenthood's revenue, Lee said. 'It would block thousands from care,' Lee said. 'And still, they push forward, because the cruelty isn't just part of the policy, it is the policy.' The bill passed the Republican-controlled U.S. House by a single vote in May. It's now before the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, which is widely expected to amend the bill and return it to the House before it can go to Trump. Read More: MASS.-ive Impact: What Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' means to you | John L. Micek Lawmakers are moving the bill across Capitol Hill under a process known as 'reconciliation,' which requires a simple majority vote. All told, the bill would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $793 billion over 10 years. In Massachusetts, the bill would cost the state's health care system $1.75 billion and strip coverage for about 250,000 people, according to the Healey administration. The results would be disastrous for Planned Parenthood and public health broadly, Clark and her colleagues warned. " It would defund cancer screenings and prenatal care, postpartum services, fertility treatment, and preventative care. Ninety-six percent of Planned Parenthood's clinical work has nothing to do with abortion," Clark, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, said. 'That's right. And Republicans know that there have been no federal dollars in decades going to provide abortion services. But that hasn't stopped them from doing everything they need to do to take away healthcare from millions of women,' Clark continued. Warren painted a similarly dire picture. 'Thirteen states now have an all-out ban on abortion,' the Cambridge lawmaker said. 'Women are being forced to carry doomed pregnancies to term, [and] more are forced to miscarry in parking lots, so they will be closer to death.' ' ... Republicans in Congress are now trying to pass a bill that would rip healthcare coverage away from 16 million people so that they can give trillions of dollars in tax giveaways to billionaires and billionaire corporations right here in New England,' Warren continued. Pressley reflected on her own experience with Planned Parenthood, where she had been diagnosed and treated for health issues that included painful uterine fibroids. " I was met with compassion, and community, and embrace, and that meant everything," the Boston lawmaker said, stressing the impact that Medicaid cuts will have on Black maternal mortality. 'Every time we're in Washington and folks across the aisle mostly, but not only, white men start to attack the critical work of Planned Parenthood, I know the moment they open their mouth that they've never sat across from a dedicated Planned Parenthood provider or patient,' she said. 'Because if they had, they would understand the vital importance of this work.' Democrats on Capitol Hill, including U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., have tried to peel off Republican support for the bill by driving home the bill's impact on Red States, which have large Medicaid populations. In the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., can afford to lose just three GOP votes to win passage. There, Warren said, she sees possibilities. " We're going to talk about this," Warren said. We're going to get them face to face and make sure they understand ... that if they vote to advance this bill the way it is written now, then they are going to cost the lives of the people that they have been elected to represent," she said. Clark said lawmakers have already talked to Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey about helping to backfill any Medicaid money the state loses. But both Healey and the state Senate's top budget writer each have said the state won't be able to do much about replacing any lost cash. " States aren't gonna have a lot of options if you are asked to absorb the Medicaid cuts,' Clark said, 'The food program cuts public school cuts, veterans benefits cuts — states do not have that ability and flexibility," she said, referring to other social services cuts in the bill. 'They need a partner in the federal government.' Gov. Healey: 'No threats' to Mass. as U.S. tensions with Iran escalate Donald Trump may have lost one of his most loyal supporters over Iran Here's how federal cuts could undermine free community college in Mass. These 16 states are supporting the Trump admin in lawsuit with Harvard Alums urge Harvard to resist compromise with Trump as reports of deal emerge Read the original article on MassLive.
NBC News
26-06-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
On the 10th anniversary of the U.S. legalizing gay marriage, Jim Obergefell says the fight isn't over
A decade after the Supreme Court's historic Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, some advocates fear the fight for marriage equality is far from over. Among them is Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the case, who became the face of the 2015 decision and has continued to advocate for LGBTQ rights. 'Ten years later, I certainly wasn't expecting to be talking about the threats to marriage equality, the potential for Obergefell to be overturned,' Obergefell told NBC News in an interview. The 2015 ruling was a turning point for LGBTQ rights. But Obergefell said he fears recent comments from conservative Supreme Court justices may signal a willingness to overturn it, particularly after the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion. 'For 49 years, people grew up with that right, and then with the proverbial stroke of a pen on that decision, that right was taken away,' Obergefell said. 'We have to learn from that.' In his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly mentioned Obergefell as a decision that the high court should reconsider, raising alarms among same-sex marriage advocates. Justice Samuel Alito, in a separate 2024 opinion, also expressed concerns about the Obergefell decision, warning that Americans who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds could be labeled as bigots.
The Hill
25-06-2025
- Health
- The Hill
Texans most likely to travel out of state for abortions last year: Study
More than 150,000 people traveled out of state for an abortion last year, with Texans alone making up roughly a fifth of that number, according to a recent report. That is a slight drop from the more than 170,000 people who traveled out of state for the procedure in 2023, according to the report from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health and rights group. More than 28,000 Texans crossed state lines in 2024 to receive abortion care, with many traveling to states as far away as New York, Washington, Maryland and Michigan. These Lone Star State residents traveled to a total of 14 states to receive the care last year, with most visiting nearby states like New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas, according to the report. Abortion has been almost entirely banned in Texas since 2021. Now, the procedure is only permitted to save the life of a pregnant patient, with violators subject to life in prison, loss of licensure, or fines of up to $100,000. The law is confusing and vague, health care workers say, causing some to forgo providing life-saving abortions. The report does not provide details on the logistical, financial or social obstacles the people faced while traveling to receive abortions. 'In addition to travel costs, driving or flying across state lines often requires taking time off work, navigating complex logistics and arranging childcare, not to mention paying for the abortion itself,' Isaac Maddow-Zimet, Guttmacher Institute data scientist and lead author of the study, wrote. The study was released on the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v, Wade and federal protections for abortion access. Since then, at least 12 states have almost entirely banned abortion, and another 10 have severely restricted access to it, according to an analysis from the healthcare policy nonprofit KFF.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Abortion in America: 3 years after Roe's repeal, in 7 charts
Three years ago, the Supreme Court issued a bombshell ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, ending nearly 50 years of precedent that had protected abortion rights throughout the United States. 'The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion … and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,' Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. That decision marked a huge victory for the anti-abortion movement, which had worked for decades to reverse the 1973 ruling in Roe that had required all states to allow abortions at least up to the point of fetal viability — roughly 24 weeks into pregnancy. It also sparked a political and legislative frenzy as states and voters reckoned with having the power to fully regulate abortion on their own for the first time in half a century. Three years later, America is in a fundamentally different place than it was before the Dobbs decision. Beyond its direct impact on reproductive health care, the ruling also had major political implications across the country. Here are some of the things that have changed — and a few that surprisingly haven't — since Roe was repealed. The most obvious and immediate effect of Dobbs was the roll back of abortion rights in dozens of states. Thirteen states had 'trigger laws' in place that were designed to instantly impose strict new restrictions or outright bans the moment Roe was repealed. Some others had dormant anti-abortion measures still on the books that became active again once nationwide protections disappeared. Today, abortion is essentially banned, with limited exceptions, in 12 states. Another 10 states ban abortions earlier in pregnancy than the standard established under Roe. Laws in the remaining half of states either mirror Roe's fetal viability standard or have no gestational limits on abortions. We're only now beginning to understand the impact that these new bans have had. Somewhat unexpectedly, they don't appear to have reduced the number of abortions in the U.S. The best evidence we have suggests that the total has gone up since Roe was overturned. There were just over 1 million abortions in the U.S. last year, about 100,000 more than there were in 2020, according to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-reproductive rights research organization. That increase represents a break from a long-standing trend that had seen the total number of abortions per year cut nearly in half from their peak in the early 1990s. How can the implementation of strict bans in large swaths of the country not cause the number of abortions to fall? Part of the answer is that abortion access in some red states was quite limited even when Roe was in place. But the main reason is a massive surge in abortion-related travel out of highly-restrictive areas to states with more permissive laws. Last year, more than 155,000 patients crossed state lines in order to obtain an abortion, according to Guttmacher Institute estimates. That's nearly twice as many as in 2020. Roughly 70% of the abortions in New Mexico and Kansas last year were performed on out-of-state patients, mostly from Texas. There were 35,000 abortions performed on out-of-state patients in Illinois, which borders several states with strict bans. Two trends that were already in motion when the Dobbs decision came down may have also reduced the ruling's impact. The first is the growing importance of medications like mifepristone and misoprostol, which allow patients to have an abortion without undergoing a medical procedure. Medications had been an increasingly common alternative to traditional in-clinic abortions (alternatively known as procedural or surgical abortions) for years, but their use has accelerated even more since Roe was repealed. Last year, 63% of abortions were performed via medication, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The second trend is the telemedicine revolution that was spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic two years before Dobbs was decided. Like nearly all types of doctor's visits, the share of abortion-related appointments that happen virtually has skyrocketed over the past five years. By the end of 2024, a quarter of all abortions were provided by telehealth, according to the Society of Family Planning. Roe's repeal didn't just affect the total number of abortions, but its broader affects on health and fertility are still coming into focus. The limited data available does offer some hints. Research released earlier this year found that strict abortion bans do appear to have resulted in more than 20,000 more babies being born than would otherwise be expected in restrictive states, particularly among Black and Hispanic mothers and people with low incomes. But that same research found a troubling increase in infant mortality within those same groups. A separate study by the Gender Equity Policy Institute estimated that mothers in restrictive states are twice as likely to die due to pregnancy-related complications as those in more 'supportive' states. Dobbs was decided just four months before the 2022 midterm elections, instantly moving abortion up the list of most important issues in races across the country. Blowback over the ruling is credited with helping Democrats hold off a widely expected 'red wave' and maintain control of the Senate. With the status quo on abortion suddenly upended, states also had to decide what their own policies on the issue would be. That led to a wave of ballot initiatives that allowed voters, for the first time, to decide how accessible abortion should be in their states. Since 2022, there have been 14 separate state ballot measures to either protect or expand abortion access. Eleven were approved, including initiatives that repealed highly restrictive laws in Missouri and Ohio that went into effect when Roe was repealed. Several initiatives that would have rolled back abortion protections and granted lawmakers more power to restrict abortion have failed. It hasn't been a clean sweep for pro-abortion initiatives, however. Last year, voters in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota had a chance to significantly expand abortion rights in their states. All three measures came up short. The most glaring example of the limits of abortion as a political issue came in the 2024 presidential election, which saw Donald Trump win a second term even though his three Supreme Court picks provided the decisive votes to overturn Roe. The Dobbs decision clearly had an impact on American's views about abortion, but polls show that the shift has been relatively small. In a nation where elections are often decided by the slimmest of margins, that can matter a lot. But public opinion on abortion appears to have been deeply entrenched after decades of heated debate over the issue. Even after such a dramatic change in the nation's laws, polls only moved a few percentage points, leaving overall sentiment roughly where it has stood for 50 years. Three years is too short of a time period to fully understand the impact of something as monumental as Roe's repeal. Abortion opponents are continuing to push for even more restrictions, as reproductive rights supporters fight to make abortion more accessible. No doubt that the courts will have plenty of say in how those battles are decided.
