By Anna Chiaradonna || Staff Writer
In the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, the ramifications have, for the majority, been foreseeable. Over a dozen red states have moved to ban abortions, and dozens of clinics have emptied, leaving more than 25 million women in restricted states scrambling to obtain their fundamental right to bodily autonomy.
Most abortion bans are complete, meaning they prevent abortion beginning in the early stages of pregnancy — with limited or no exceptions. In Georgia, abortion is banned after six weeks of pregnancy, when most people are unaware that they are pregnant. In other states, abortion is also severely restricted; Nebraska, Arizona, Florida, Utah, and North Carolina have bans starting at 12, 15, and 20 weeks of pregnancy, respectively.
Data suggests significantly fewer people have been able to get legal abortions since Roe was overturned, despite the need for abortion rising before 2022. WeCount, a Florida-based Non-Profit organization that tracks abortion access post-Roe by the Society of Family Planning, calculated that 66,000 fewer abortions were performed in states that banned the procedure between June last year and March this year.
A recent WeCount report added that: “People in states with abortion bans were forced to delay their abortion to travel to another state, to self-manage their abortion, or to continue a pregnancy they did not want.”
On the other hand, Massachusetts, California, Colorado, and New Jersey are some of the states that have ratified shield laws, protecting providers who perform abortions and people who travel to their states to receive them. Idaho, however, recently passed a law criminalizing anyone who aids a minor in traveling out of state for abortion care. Texas has also threatened legal repercussions for companies that assist people traveling out of state for abortion.
Pregnancy Justice, a legal advocacy group that fights for women criminalized while pregnant, released data suggesting at least 41 cases of women criminalized in their pregnancies. The cases were across 14 states, with more than half in Alabama. The organization suspects an inaccuracy in those numbers, estimating they are a vast undercount.
“Since Dobbs, we’ve seen increasingly alarming rhetoric in abortion-hostile states, lifting the veil on their true intentions: control and criminalization,” said Pregnancy Justice’s executive director, Dana Sussman. “The Alabama attorney general threatened to prosecute people for abortion under the chemical endangerment law. A South Carolina bill sought to make abortion punishable by death. And a Kentucky bill proposed homicide charges for having an abortion.”
Despite medical exceptions allowing abortions in cases of rape, incest, medical emergencies, and pregnancies incompatible with life in many states, there are still countless cases where women have been denied miscarriage care, life-saving care, and other vital health services— all of which should be an irrefutable necessity.
However, there are also strings of hope threaded through this highly-charged issue. As the national election looms, the public is making it abundantly clear that they do not support abortion bans in every state where the public has had a chance to vote on abortion restrictions since Roe was overturned.
“From Kansas to the Wisconsin special election, to the midterm election, there’s a real recognition now, even among anti-abortion lawmakers, that perhaps they might experience some political blowback for this,” says Kelly Baden, a public policy expert at the Guttmacher Institute.
The day the constitutional right to abortion terminated in the United States, Americans were faced with an unfathomable moment of regression. The Dobbs decision is a blatant attack on the very concept America has planted its roots in: freedom. The current generation of women have fewer constitutional rights than before, conjuring a seismic rupture in the continuous battle over female autonomy.
Sophomore Anna Chiaradonna is a staff writer. Her email is achiarad@fandm.edu.