Three years after Alabama’s abortion ban, many must make tiring trips for care

July 11, 2025
Rhonda Sonnenberg

About every other day in Alabama, a woman suspecting she is pregnant seeks abortion counseling at an Alabama clinic without knowing how far into the pregnancy she is. She may be a mother with three young children at home. She might be in an abusive relationship. Or perhaps she is a student who someday wants children — just not now.

Once a clinic nurse determines the approximate stage of the pregnancy, she will refer the patient to an out-of-state abortion facility where the procedure is still legal. Meanwhile, staff at the Birmingham-based Yellowhammer Fund would work to guarantee a financial contribution for her travel, hotel and child care costs, if necessary, and cobble together funding for the abortion care from additional funding sources. Yellowhammer’s work is a lifeline for pregnant people in Alabama, providing grassroots support and resources when they need it most.

Continued: https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/alabama-abortion-ban-assistance/

USA – For some pregnant patients, unregulated anti-abortion centers are the only affordable option

Research has found that crisis pregnancy centers often provide inaccurate information about pregnancy, which can influence people's reproductive decisions.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
February 9, 2024

Savannah McNally was 24 years old, and in the middle of a divorce, trying to sell her house, wrapping up her service in the Navy and figuring out a way to finish college. She was also pregnant.

“It was pretty much instantly a feeling of dread. I didn’t want to be pregnant. I don’t want kids,” McNally recalled. “I was crying and screaming, ‘This is not going to happen.’”

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/02/crisis-pregnancy-centers-anti-abortion-only-option/

Abortion providers on two years of Texas ban: ‘We’re living in a devastating reality’

Senate Bill 8 wiped out almost all abortion care in the second-most populous state in the US, and served as a harbinger of what was to come over the rest of the country

by Mary Tuma
Thu 31 Aug 2023

Nearly a year before the US supreme court eviscerated Roe v Wade, the court allowed an unprecedented abortion ban to take effect in Texas, serving as a harbinger of what was to sweep over the rest of the country.

…. In the two years since, Texas abortion providers – some of the first in the US to experience a nearly post-Roe world – reflect on the devastating and lasting effect of the severe law, the trauma they felt denying patients care, and the struggle they faced when deciding whether or not to flee the state or stay put.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/31/texas-abortion-ban-senate-bill-8

Last year’s US Supreme Court ruling left women struggling to find abortions

Evelyn Hockstein, Gabriella Borter
July 22, 2023

The day Alan Braid opened his abortion clinic for business in Albuquerque, New Mexico, last August, he looked out at a waiting room full of patients fresh off trips from Texas, some with suitcases in tow.

Several months later, Dr Braid’s daughter Andrea Gallegos drew a similar crowd to the opening of their abortion clinic in Carbondale, Illinois, with patients arriving from far-flung states to end pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/roe-v-wade-texas-abortion-b2366363.html

22.07.2023

How one quiet Illinois college town became the symbol of abortion rights in America

Chris Kenning, USA TODAY
Jun. 4, 2023

CARBONDALE, Ill. – The 26-year-old had never heard of the distant southern Illinois town, but it had become the closest option.

So she cobbled together money. Found child care. Asked her brother for a ride. And set off early one morning to drive north across state lines to 22,000-person Carbondale.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2023/06/04/carbondale-illinois-abortion-clinics/70180040007/

As South bans abortion, thousands turn to Illinois clinics

By AMANDA SEITZ
Mar 25, 2023

FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill. (AP) — Dr. Colleen McNicholas is fresh off performing two abortions when a ringing phone quickly stops her.

“Oh, ugh,” she said, eyes widened, before she darted off to another room.

Just the day before, 58 women had abortions at the Fairview Heights’ Planned Parenthood clinic, 15 miles east of St. Louis. But the new day is still stacked with appointments; as many as 100 abortion and family planning patients might walk through the doors.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-bans-illinois-clinic-south-travel-demand-a30afcbd022cdeeb92b9aa5788421687

25.03.2023

Commentary

Alamo Clinic

Andrea Gallegos

Dr. Colleen McNicholas

Fairview Heights Planned Parenthood

Video: As San Antonio abortion clinic closes, its director worries about who is left behind

In August, movers arrived at Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services to help the abortion clinic pack up for a move out of state.

BY JINITZAIL HERNÁNDEZ
SEPT. 5, 2022
Video: 4:21 minutes

SAN ANTONIO — Abortion clinics are closing across Texas after the state banned the procedure, with few exceptions, at any point in a pregnancy. At Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services, office equipment is marked for donation, longtime staff members are relocating or finding new jobs, and medical equipment is loaded onto moving trucks.

Before the movers arrived on a Thursday morning in August, executive administrator Andrea Gallegos turned the lights on in empty patient rooms and worried about whom the clinic was leaving behind.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/05/alamo-abortion-clinic-moving/

05.09.2022

Commentary

Featured

Videos/Images

Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services

Empty clinics, no calls: The fallout of Oklahoma’s abortion ban

By Caroline Kitchener, The Washington Post (not behind paywall)
Jun 4, 2022

Whenever a new patient pulls into the parking lot at the Tulsa Women’s Clinic, Tiffany Taylor rushes to flick on the lights. She turns off her indie folk playlist, looks out at the empty waiting room and prepares to deliver a speech she has recited about a dozen times since the Oklahoma legislature passed a bill last month banning abortions from the moment of fertilization.

“I’m so sorry,” the nurse says to anyone who wanders in, asking about abortion. “But there’s this new law.”

Continued: https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2022/06/04/empty-clinics-no-calls-the-fallout-of-oklahomas-abortion-ban/

Many states are bracing for a post-Roe world. In Oklahoma, it’s practically arrived.

Already, clinicians in Oklahoma are trying to devise strategies to help their patients get to clinics in other states because of a six-week ban. But there are limits to what they can do.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
May 12, 2022

The day after the Supreme Court leak, Andrea Gallegos had already started to cancel patients’ appointments.

A draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed access to abortion, had been published online and verified by the court. In the aftermath, Gallegos, the administrator for Tulsa Women’s Clinic, an Oklahoma-based abortion provider, wasn’t worried about Roe — at least, it wasn’t the first thing she was worried about. To her, there was a bigger, more immediate threat: a six-week abortion ban the Republican governor was expected to sign any day now. The law, a direct copycat of a prohibition currently in effect in Texas, was expected to survive legal challenges. It would take effect immediately.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/05/oklahoma-abortion-clinics-access-limitations/