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/


Three Years Post-Dobbs, Abortion Providers Experience High Levels of Violence & Disruption

April 23, 2025

NATIONAL—Today, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) released its Violence & Disruption report with data from 2023 and 2024. The report shows there has been sustained and consistent harassment and violence against abortion providers, even as clinics closed and abortion became harder to access in some regions.

This year’s interactive report compares the violence and disruption that NAF members reported in 2023 & 2024 to the total data NAF has tracked since 1977. The report features “heat maps” that demonstrate the states where providers reported experiencing the highest levels of obstruction, protesters, threats, and trespassing. Finally, the report includes an audio storyteller map where viewers can click through and hear directly from providers at clinics across the country about their experiences with violence and disruption.

Continued: https://prochoice.org/three-years-post-dobbs-abortion-providers-experience-high-levels-of-violence-disruption/


Abortion Providers Feel Like ‘Sitting Ducks’ After Trump Rolls Back Clinic Protections

The president has limited enforcement of the FACE Act — created to safeguard abortion providers and patients — and pardoned 23 people who were convicted of the federal charge.

By Alanna Vagianos
Feb 22, 2025

Julie Burkhart’s career in abortion care started when she was a college student working at a clinic in Wichita, Kansas, during the infamous Summer of Mercy in 1991. Thousands of protesters swarmed the city to rally against abortion clinics — lying on sidewalks to block clinic entrances, throwing their bodies in front of patients’ cars and screaming threats at anyone entering the three targeted clinics. Since then, she has lived through the assassination of her former boss and mentor, Dr. George Tiller, death threats on her own life, stalkers and protesters coming to her home and, most recently, the firebombing of her Wyoming abortion clinic.

Still, this moment stands out among the rest, she told HuffPost.

Continued: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abortion-clinics-face-act-trump_n_67b8df3de4b075fafcec2f5e


One year into new abortion limits, North Carolina patients and providers struggle to shoulder the load restrictions bring

Increased restrictions have ushered in a new landscape of care with patients navigating more logistical hurdles and travel. Abortion providers have reworked operations to comply with the new law.

July 1, 2024
By Rachel Crumpler

Katherine Farris has been an abortion provider for more than 20 years, and she says that this past year has been the hardest of her career — by a long shot.

Not her first year of practice when everything was new. Not the year she stepped into the role of chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic to supervise clinic operations across North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. Not the years she navigated COVID protocols to keep her staff and patients safe.

Continued: https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2024/07/01/one-year-into-nc-new-abortion-law/


Two years after Roe’s overturn, there are more abortions in America — but they’re harder to get

Abortion has become more diffuse, thanks to the rise of telehealth and abortion pills. Both are under fire in the courts and state legislatures.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
June 24, 2024

Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the number of abortions performed in the country is up. But that’s only part of the story. In many places, they are also much harder to get or provide.

Clinicians nationwide provided more than a million abortions in 2023 – the highest in the country’s recorded history — in the first full year since Roe’s fall, according to the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute. That’s the result of a dramatic change in how people get abortions: Rather than receiving clinic-based care in their home states, people are increasingly traveling across state lines, or going online to obtain drug prescriptions. Almost 200,000 people traveled to another state for an abortion. Data from the Society of Family Planning suggests that 1 in 5 are now done through telemedicine, in which a health care professional prescribes and mails abortion pills for a patient to take at home.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/06/two-years-roe-overturn-abortions/


Many Florida women can’t get abortions past 6 weeks. Where else can they go?

Since Florida enacted a six-week abortion ban, clinics in several other Southern and mid-Atlantic states have sprung into action

By MAKIYA SEMINERA and GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press
May 4, 2024

RALEIGH, N.C. -- When Florida enacted its six-week abortion ban last week, clinics in several other Southern and mid-Atlantic states sprang into action, knowing women would look to them for services no longer available where they live.

Health care providers in North Carolina, three states to the north, are rushing to expand availability and decrease wait times. “We are already seeing appointments,” said Katherine Farris, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. “We have appointments on the books with patients who were unable to get in, in the last days of April in Florida.”

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/florida-women-abortions-past-6-weeks-109936747


Post “Roe,” Advocates Fear for the Future of Contraceptive Self-Determination

A climate of misinformation and fear has people feeling they are making their contraceptive choices under duress.

By Garnet Henderson , TRUTHOUT
November 27, 2022

Jacora Johnson, a 22-year-old Texas resident, is facing a difficult and potentially painful decision. They currently use the Depo-Provera shot, a type of birth control that’s administered by a medical provider every three months. In addition to being a highly effective form of contraception, it’s also gender-affirming for Johnson, who is nonbinary.

“I don’t get my menstrual cycle, which is great because that can be dysphoric for me,” they said. Johnson also enjoys having regular check-ins with a doctor. But in Texas, most abortions have been banned since September 2021, when SB 8, the law that encouraged private citizens to enforce it by suing those who “aid or abet” abortions, went into effect.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/post-roe-advocates-fear-for-the-future-of-contraceptive-self-determination/


USA – The Capitol Insurrection Was Fed by the Anti-Abortion Movement

BY Tina Vásquez, Prism
February 2, 2021

Reproductive justice advocate Jordyn Close watched with the rest of the nation on Jan. 6 as Donald Trump supporters invaded the Capitol. Some were outfitted in tactical gear and had zip ties at the ready. Others brought nooses and pitchforks and Confederate flags. The insurrectionists broke windows, ransacked lawmakers’ offices, and spread feces on the Capitol walls. By the end of it all, five people died.

The escalation from rhetoric to violence at the Capitol has shocked many Americans. Close, who works with Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity (URGE), is an abortion storyteller with We Testify, and who serves on the board of the abortion fund Women Have Options Ohio, is less surprised. Very early into the news coverage of the insurrection, Close saw a number of familiar faces. Overwhelmingly, these were white men who — when not trying to overthrow the government — spend a great deal of their time harassing people outside of abortion clinics.

Continued: https://truthout.org/articles/the-capitol-insurrection-was-fed-by-the-anti-abortion-movement/


Abortion Providers Watching Capitol Violence Say They’ve ‘Seen This Rage Before’

From fire bombings, shootings, and ceaseless harassment, anti-abortion violence has wreaked havoc on clinics for decades.

Jan 8, 2021
Caroline Reilly

Trump supporters laid siege to our nation’s capital on Wednesday, storming past
a flaccid and enabling law enforcement presence in an attempt to stage a coup.
As they were filling the halls of Congress—stealing lecterns and paintings, and
taking selfies at Nancy’s Pelosi’s desk—pundits lamented: This is not America;
this is not who we are. Some even marveled at the cooperation from law
enforcement, wondering how security could have been so lax.

Unfortunately, abortion providers are all too familiar with the sort of
violence that played out at the Capitol.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2021/01/08/abortion-providers-watching-capitol-violence-say-theyve-seen-this-rage-before/


The New Abortion Rights Advocates Are on TikTok

Gen Z activists have been unapologetic and confrontational, a shift in tactics for a movement at a crossroads.

By Jessica Grose
Dec. 10, 2020

In a TikTok filmed in August outside of a women’s health center in Charlotte, N.C., the uncensored version of the mid-1990s novelty rap song “Short, Short Man,” by Gillette blares: “Eenie weenie teenie weenie shriveled little short, short man.”

The camera is focused on a middle-aged white man in sunglasses, who is holding a poster depicting what appears to be a fetus with the word “abortion” printed on it. The caption on the video reads, “don’t worry, the volume was turned all the way up so he could hear :-)”

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/style/abortion-rights-activists-tiktok.html