USA – The Accelerating Project to Extend Abortion Bans to All 50 States

In a legal challenge to abortion access at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Department of Justice and Louisiana are on opposite sides. But they want the same thing.

Melissa Gira Grant
September 11, 2026

For the anti-abortion movement, overturning Roe v. Wade was never meant to be the end of the road. As destructive as the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was—it reversed Roe and permitted states to ban abortion—it did not eliminate abortion. In fact, since the decision, more people have had abortions, thanks to the widespread availability of medication abortion dispensed remotely. “The fight for life is far from over,” proclaimed the state of Louisiana in the opening line of its latest legal challenge to abortion access, which the state argued before a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Wednesday. For Louisiana, it is not enough to have banned abortion within its borders; it wants to extend that prohibition to reach those outside the state. Now it’s claiming that outside forces have undermined the state’s sovereignty—simply by making it possible for Louisianans to continue to access abortion.

Continued; https://newrepublic.com/article/215327/accelerating-project-extend-abortion-bans-50-states

Dobbs’s Near-Total Destruction of Abortion Rights Across the South

Anti-abortion lawmakers are forcing women to travel hundreds of miles to obtain health care.

Laura O'Connor
September 8, 2026

Thousands of patients across the Southeastern United States are now being forced to travel more than 250 miles to access abortion care in North Carolina, according to a study recently published by The Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, completed by Dr. Kelsey Loeliger and her colleagues, quantified the South’s increasingly desperate abortion landscape, documenting the out-of-state abortion cases in North Carolina in the first year since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

Anti-choice lawmakers throughout the Southeast have made abortion care inaccessible for tens of thousands of women, and now North Carolina—despite having its own anti-abortion policies—has become something of an “abortion refugee” state, with over 10,000 more people traveling from out of state to seek abortion care in the first year since Roe was overturned. Moreover, the study found that abortion bans disproportionately impact Black patients, adding to a growing body of research that underlines the racial underpinning of anti-abortion policymaking.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/214851/south-dobbs-reproductive-health-landscape

USA – The Mental Health Cost of Abortion Bans for Patients — and Physicians

Dawn Attride
April 23, 2026

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ended the constitutional right to abortion, Caroline Rouse, MD, said her maternal-fetal medicine practice in Indianapolis has profoundly changed.

Under Indiana’s near-total ban, patients who could previously receive time-sensitive care in their own community are now unable to and/or forced to travel to other states.

Continued; https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/mental-health-cost-abortion-bans-patients-and-physicians-2026a1000cv0?form=fpf

‘The Other Roe’ Film Shines a Light on Forgotten Abortion-Rights Case Doe v. Bolton

Roe v. Wade was only half the story. A new short documentary spotlights the case that made abortion rights real in practice.

4/15/2026
by Ava Slocum

On June 24, 2026, we’ll reach the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. This year, which would have been Roe’s 53rd anniversary, also coincides with the United States’ 250th, reminding us that while the U.S. has been independent since 1776, American women are still far from having full rights and power over our own bodies.

Roe v. Wade, which passed in 1973 and stood for 49 years, gets most of the credit for establishing the national right to abortion. Many people think of Roe as the first big bookend ushering in the right to abortion in the U.S., with Dobbs as the other bookend taking that right away again.

However, Roe wasn’t the only groundbreaking case that paved the way for abortion rights in the U.S.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2026/04/15/the-other-roe-film-doe-v-bolton-abortion-rights-history-margie-pitts-hames/

It Is Sacred Work’: Abortion Clinics Are Stepping Up After the Fall of Roe

Organizations across the country are ensuring people continue to have access to reproductive care.

by Eleanor J. Bader
November 25, 2025

In the first 100 days after the June 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, sixty-six health clinics in fifteen states stopped providing surgical abortions, and fourteen states enacted near-total bans on the procedure.

But then something unexpected happened. By 2024, twenty-one new facilities had opened in states where abortion was not completely banned, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Moreover, KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation) reports that by 2023, 226 virtual providers—including online pharmacies, feminist health centers, and help lines—had set up shop to counsel people seeking abortion services and provide abortion medication through the mail.

Continued: https://progressive.org/latest/it-is-sacred-work-abortion-clinics-are-stepping-up-after-the-fall-of-roe-bader-20251125/

USA – An Open Letter to Rep. Kat Cammack From a Medical Doctor: It’s Abortion Bans That Make Doctors Afraid to Act, Not ‘the Radical Left’

July 10, 2025
by Chloe Nazra Lee

I remember the day I heard about Dobbs. It was a summer morning during my final year of medical school. I’d awakened in the damp basement apartment I’d rented for a clinical rotation in Pittsburgh. As I scrolled through my news feed, my heart plummeted. There was a resigned and tacitly understood melancholy among the women in the hospital that day. A sisterhood predicated on shared despair was quietly forming during the upheaval of perceived judicial betrayal. Even those of us who barely knew each other might wearily exchange passing glances in the hallway, signaling, “Well, shit. Girl, I know. And it’ll only get worse.”

No woman may escape the cruelty of the nebulous and varying restrictions on reproductive healthcare in the post-Roe world—as Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) discovered in May 2024 when faced with a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy shortly after Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/10/rep-kat-cammack-medical-doctor-abortion-bans-that-doctors-afraid-act/

USA – The Resilient Provider Who’s Survived Arson, Death Threats and Supreme Court Rulings

Before Julie Burkhart could even open Wyoming’s only full-service abortion clinic, an extremist tried to burn it down. That hasn’t stopped her. Neither has the Dobbs ruling.

June 20, 2025
By Colleen DeBaise

I figured Julie Burkhart – an abortion care provider whose Wyoming clinic was torched a few years ago – would be tough as nails. What I didn’t expect, as we spoke over Zoom recently, was that I’d be complimenting Burkhart on her actual nails. Turns out, her daughter got married recently, and “I got these done for the wedding,” Burkhart told me, twisting both hands in front of the camera to show off her ballet-slipper manicure.

That Burkhart, named to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2025 list, can enjoy moments of lightness speaks to the resilience she’s honed amid a career marred by violence, death threats and vicious harassment. A longtime fighter for women’s reproductive freedom, she has been called a hero by abortion-rights supporters and “Julie Darkheart” (and much worse) by detractors.

Continued: https://thestoryexchange.org/abortion-provider-julie-burkhart/