Filming on the front line of America's 'war on women'

‘The A-Word’, a new documentary film by The Independent, investigates the state of reproductive rights two years after the Supreme Court upended access to abortion care

- ALEX WOODWARD, BEL TREW, & ALICJA HAGOPIAN

The decision was decades in the making.

Anti-abortion lawmakers and legal groups fought for years for the chance to take away what was a constitutional right for a generation of American women.

On 24 June 2022, they won. The Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade, upending access to abortion care for millions of women.

Within months of the decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, more than a dozen states moved to effectively outlaw all abortions, with criminal and civil penalties for providers and patients alike.

Two years later, nearly half of all US states have criminalised abortion care in some form, while Democratic-led states have sought to become sanctuaries for the roughly 30 million women living under abortion bans.

An investigative series and documentary – The A-Word – from The Independent this week uncovers this “war on women” and the politically volatile debate over the future of critical healthcare for tens of millions of Americans.

Abortion is now banned at all stages of pregnancy, with only limited exceptions, in more than a dozen Republican-controlled states. The procedure is outlawed past six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant, in at least three other states, while several others have imposed other restrictions and barriers to care in a constantly evolving and legally confusing map for abortion access.

Today, horrific stories of women in dire need of emergency abortions fill courtroom testimony and lawsuits that have joined an explosion of litigation targeting anti-abortion laws across the country.

The case of Amber Nicole Thurman – who died after lethal delays in her medical care following a rare complication from a medication abortion in Georgia, where abortion is outlawed at six weeks of pregnancy – has magnified the state of anti-abortion laws in the wake of Dobbs.