‘It’s Breaking My Heart’: Abortion Providers on Life After Roe

For many abortion providers, working in a clinic isn’t just a job—it’s a calling. But clinics are businesses, too, and in the 15 states that have banned almost all abortions, business has been turbulent.

Carter Sherman, VICE
June 28, 2023

Kathaleen Pittman was too angry to retire.

Pittman had worked at Hope Medical Group, one of the last abortion clinics in Louisiana, for thirty years. She’d started there as a part-time counselor in 1992; by 2022, she was running the place. She’d gone to the Supreme Court to defend her clinic and won, successfully striking down a Louisiana abortion restriction in 2020.

Two years after that victory, she watched as the Supreme Court dismantled her life’s work by overturning Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. She went back to court to try and fend off Louisiana’s cascade of abortion bans, but a month after the overturning, the clinic had to close. Louisiana had outlawed nearly all abortions.

Continued: https://www.rsn.org/001/its-breaking-my-heart-abortion-providers-on-life-after-roe.html

50 years after Roe v. Wade, many abortion providers are changing how they do business

January 22, 2023
Sarah McCammon
4-Minute Listen with Transcript

The 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision would have been a day of celebration for many abortion-rights supporters. But this milestone anniversary, on January 22, falls just short of seven months after another landmark abortion decision: the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling issued June 24 that overturned Roe.

After Dobbs, many clinics in red states where restrictive abortion laws have been enacted have been forced to close their doors and move, or stay open and dramatically shift the services they're providing.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150574240/50-years-roe-v-wade-dobbs-abortion-providers-reinvent

How some providers are working around abortion bans since Roe v. Wade was overturned

Workarounds ensure doctors aren't breaking laws, experts and advocates say.

By Mary Kekatos
Video by Jessie DiMartino
October 17, 2022

Some state officials as well as abortion providers are trying to find workarounds to help patients who want to end their pregnancies after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Since the late June ruling, at least 12 states have ended nearly all abortion services, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/providers-work-abortion-bans-roe-wade-overturned/story?id=91435808

The Abortion Clinics Staying Open in Hostile States

By Andrea González-Ramírez
AUG. 19, 2022

Earlier this year, Katie Quinonez, the executive director of Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, had her eyes on a vacant lot next door. Purchasing the lot would allow the state’s only abortion clinic, located in the city of Charleston, to expand. Quinonez says the owner of the lot rejected the clinic’s offer, however, because the local West Virginians for Life chapter had been renting it, and the owner wanted to give the anti-abortion group until the end of the year to raise enough money to buy the property.

It was a frustrating reminder of the logistical challenges the clinic would face if it were ever to close and later attempt to reopen. The overturn of Roe v. Wade opened the door to an imminent ban on abortion in the Mountain State, making it crucial for Quinonez to plan the clinic’s next act.

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2022/08/the-abortion-clinics-staying-open-in-ban-states.html

Abortion providers are trying to open new clinics as close as possible to states with bans

Providers hope the new clinics can help serve the surge of patients now expected to travel for abortions.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
July 11, 2022

Whole Woman’s Health announced plans to close its four Texas abortion clinics and open one in neighboring New Mexico.

CHOICES, based in Memphis, Tennessee, is opening a clinic in Carbondale, Illinois, the closest state expected to protect abortion rights.

https://19thnews.org/2022/07/abortion-providers-new-clinics-borders-states-bans/

What an America Without Roe Would Look Like

Legal abortions would fall, particularly among poor women in the South and Midwest, and out-of-state travel and abortion pills would play a bigger role.

By Claire Cain Miller and Margot Sanger-Katz
Dec. 5, 2021

Last week’s Supreme Court arguments on a Mississippi abortion law raised the prospect of a return to a time half a century ago — when the procedure was illegal across most of the United States and women, perilously, tried to end pregnancies on their own or sought back-alley abortions.

If the court decides to reverse or weaken the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, it will usher in a somewhat different era. Abortion would remain legal in more than half of states, but not in a wide swath of the Midwest and the South.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/upshot/abortion-without-roe-wade.html

USA – Becoming An Abortion Provider Is Filled With Barriers, Too

Becoming An Abortion Provider Is Filled With Barriers, Too

By Jo Yurcaba
Jan 2, 2020

When Dr. Elise Boos was a third-year medical resident, she would drive five hours north throughout the year to a clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana — one of the three abortion clinics in the state — to learn how to provide first and second trimester abortions. She and the other residents had to stay at a nearby hotel for two weeks at a time. Boos, who is now a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, says the rotation reinforced the stigma of the procedure for her, "because you had to leave town in order to get this training," she says. "It was hard to imagine how you could do that work in the South and still be a member of the medical community."

Continued: https://www.bustle.com/p/becoming-abortion-provider-is-filled-with-barriers-too-19497228

Medication abortion reversal is “devoid of scientific support,” judge rules in North Dakota

Medication abortion reversal is "devoid of scientific support," judge rules in North Dakota

By Kate Smith
September 10, 2019

A judge in North Dakota ruled against the state's recent law requiring physicians to tell patients that their medication abortions may reversed, a claim he called "devoid of scientific support, misleading, and untrue."

In a 24-page decision issued Tuesday morning, Judge Daniel Hovland granted the American Medical Association and Red River Women's Clinic — North Dakota's only abortion provider — a preliminary injunction against North Dakota House Bill 1336, which would have required physicians to tell patients "that it may be possible to reverse the effects of an abortion-inducing drug if she changes her mind, but time is of the essence," according to the law's text.

Continued: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/medication-abortion-reversal-is-devoid-of-scientific-support-judge-rules-in-north-dakota-today-2019-09-10/

USA – Inside The Dangerous Rise Of ‘Abortion Reversal’ Bills

Inside The Dangerous Rise Of ‘Abortion Reversal’ Bills
This year, five states have passed laws mandating that physicians tell patients their abortions can be reversed — even though evidence says otherwise.

By Melissa Jeltsen, HuffPost US
June 29, 2019

The number of states that require doctors to tell patients their abortions can be reversed with an experimental treatment doubled this year.

The rise of so-called “abortion reversal” bills has alarmed leading medical groups that say such legislation forces physicians to give misleading, unscientific and potentially dangerous advice to women, undermining the trusted doctor-patient relationship.

Continued: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/abortion-reversal-bills_n_5d164c6ee4b07f6ca57cc6fc

Hollywood rarely tells the truth about abortion. ‘Little Woods’ is different.

Hollywood rarely tells the truth about abortion. ‘Little Woods’ is different.

By Renee Bracey Sherman
April 23, 2019

Pop culture has made some progress since 1956, when an addition to the Motion Picture Production Code that governed Hollywood movie-making declared, “The subject of abortion shall be discouraged, shall never be more than suggested, and, when referred to, shall be condemned.” But even by contemporary standards, in which characters are allowed to have abortions and movies can depict those decisions positively, Nia DaCosta’s debut feature film, “Little Woods,” is a politically urgent revelation.

Rather than making the decision to have an abortion the major source of tension in the film, DaCosta starkly depicts the sacrifices that families make to afford health care, dramatizing the recent onslaught of restrictions on abortion. And her character’s choices place abortion in conversation with our national debate about opioid addiction and drug trafficking to illuminate these well-worn subjects in new ways.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/23/hollywood-rarely-tells-truth-about-abortion-little-woods-is-different/