The STATES of REPRODUCTIVE Rights

The STORIES from a POST-RUE AMERICA are HARROWING and HARD TO BELIEVE. That's why we MUST LISTEN..

- MATTIE KAHN

The clinics did not close one at a time but in droves. Within four months of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022, dozens had been forced to stop offering abortions and 26 had closed for good. By November 2023, Idaho had lost 22 percent of its practicing obstetricians. Almost one million women and girls live in that state. There are now only around 200 such doctors qualified to care for them. Experts anticipate a grim reconfiguring across the U.S.-a concentration of practitioners who are equipped to treat pregnant people in blue states, an exodus of trained doctors in red ones.

For women nationwide managing both wanted and unwanted pregnancies, the effect of Roe's overturning has been devastating.

It stands to get worse. This summer, the Supreme Court declined to rule on the merits of a case that asked the justices to consider whether emergency abortion care can be offered to patients whose health is in danger. In the meantime, in May, the Texas Supreme Court rejected a challenge to its abortion law and ruled against a group of women who had suffered serious pregnancy complications.

That same month, Louisiana moved to classify two FDA-approved abortion pills as "controlled dangerous substances," further curtailing their administration in a state in which abortion was already illegal and the medications could be offered only in very limited circumstances. Now even possessing them without a valid prescription may be considered a crime, punishable with prison time. This past February, fertility clinics across Alabama had to temporarily halt IVF services after the state's supreme court ruled that frozen embryos were entitled to the same legal rights as children; treatments were imperiled statewide. Republicans in Congress have declined to help pass legislation that would federally protect IVF.