Do you remember what happened three years ago today?
The Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, overruling the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade. The impacts were immediate and devastating, with many abortion providers turning away patients in their waiting rooms once they got word of the ruling. Since then, my colleagues and I have not stopped covering the extensive fallout of mounting abortion restrictions nationwide. Pregnancy became riskier, pregnant women died preventable deaths, and infant mortality increased. Other reproductive health procedures, including for miscarriage management and in vitro fertilization, became threatened due to the restrictions imposed by Dobbs.
The effects have not only been health-related. As my colleague Laura Morel recently reported, abortion providers have faced increasing extremism and violence since Dobbs—a trend that is likely to worsen after President Donald Trump's Department of Justice announced it will limit enforcement of the FACE Act, a federal law that prevents interfering with access to reproductive health clinics. Abortion bans have also emboldened abusers and hamstrung the work of domestic and sexual violence advocates who help support survivors fleeing abuse. The restrictions also led to economic catastrophe: Just yesterday, I wrote about the 16 states with total and six-week abortion bans that have sustained more than $64 billion in economic losses annually since Dobbs. "This is not just a women’s crisis," Melissa Mahoney, senior research economist at the Institute for Women's Policy Research, which authored the report, told me. "It’s really a national economic crisis of significant magnitude."
But if you think all this would be enough to get Republicans to back down on their opposition to abortion, you are sorely mistaken. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he asked Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Martin Makary to “do a complete review” on mifepristone, one of the two pills used in medication abortion, despite more than 100 scientific studies showing the pills are safe and effective. The Trump-backed reconciliation bill currently moving through Congress also proposes defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides services including pap smears, cancer screenings, and birth control, and banning Affordable Care Act health care plans from covering abortion.
Still, there are some reasons for hope. Data has continued to show that abortions continue to rise post-Roe, thanks in part to expanded access to abortion pills. Physicians, volunteers, and other advocates have also stepped up to help people in states with bans travel out of state to access abortions, as my colleague Abby Vesoulis outlines in a great package of profiles published yesterday. I recommend that you spend some time with their stories today. They help illustrate how, as OB-GYN and reproductive rights scholar Carole Joffe previously told me, "people who don’t want to be pregnant will always search for abortion"—and others will always be there to help them access it, no matter the risk.
—Julianne McShane
