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/

Sixteen Hours, Two Flights, and a Pastor on Call: How One Texas Woman Found Abortion Care

Since a near-total ban went into effect, tens of thousands of Texans have left the state to access abortion. Here’s how they do it.

By Bekah Stolhandske McNeel
August 26, 2025

At six-thirty on a hot July morning at Dallas Love Field Airport, Monica, a 28-year-old real estate agent, was standing at the curb looking for a stranger. She scanned the passersby hustling to their Southwest flights until she spotted the person she was there to help: a thirtysomething woman with no carry-on luggage. Rosie, who is using a pseudonym to protect her privacy, was traveling to New Mexico to get an abortion, which, at ten weeks into her pregnancy, was illegal in Texas. She had brought only a handbag and a light jacket to ward off the airport chill. It would be 92 degrees in Albuquerque, where she’d be spending ten hours before flying back to Dallas that evening. She had left her two kids, ages seven and eight, with a family friend. The kids didn’t know she was leaving the state—she’d told them she was catching up on some work at the cosmetology school where she takes night classes. She’d be home late, she had said, but hopefully in time to say good night.

Continued: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-woman-seeking-legal-abortion/

USA – How Black clergy are reframing approach on abortion with congregations

Even as some of the largest Black denominations oppose abortion, Black clergy face the reality that their congregations are disproportionately affected by lack of access to reproductive health services.

April 4, 2023
By Amethyst Holmes

(RNS) — For the Rev. Irene Prince, discussions around reproductive choice start in Bible study.

Prince, pastor of Mount Olive AME Church in Emporia, Kansas, has taught on the biblical concept of free will in connection with choice — a connection she hopes will move her congregation to “demonstrate the love of God” by being kinder and not passing judgment on how people decide to live their lives.

Continued: https://religionnews.com/2023/04/04/how-black-clergy-are-reframing-approach-on-abortion-with-congregations/

Before Roe, a Baptist Preacher Performed Abortions in Secret. Now He’s Helping Texans.

Dr. Curtis Boyd’s career encapsulates our long-fought abortion wars.

CECILIA NOWELL
Dec 14, 2022

The first thing Dr. Curtis Boyd did when he arrived at work one cloudy Monday morning in January was turn on his radio. It was 1973, and Boyd, an ordained Baptist minister, had been providing underground abortions for five years, most recently out of a mountaintop house in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The only people who knew the location of his clinic were members of the Clergy Consultation Service, a national network of faith leaders that discretely connected patients to reliable, and safe, doctors. As far as Boyd knew, he was the network’s only provider in the Southwest.

A group of Texas women had flown in that morning for appointments, but Boyd was distracted. A Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade was expected any day now. He kept one ear tuned to the news as he readied himself for the day. When the story broke that the Supreme Court had recognized the right to an abortion, Boyd and his nurse “looked at each other somewhat in shock” and then embraced. “It’s over, it’s over, thank God at last it’s over,” he says. He no longer had to live in fear that he—or worse, one of his patients—might end up in jail.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/12/curtis-boyd-abortion-clergy-consultation-service-preacher-texas-new-mexico-roe/

History shows that the First Amendment should protect abortion

Antiabortion activists have long sought to prevent this.

Perspective by Rachel Kranson
May 12, 2022

A leaked opinion revealed that the Supreme Court is potentially poised to reverse the long-standing legal precedent that established a constitutional right to abortion under the 14th Amendment’s right to privacy. That has left champions of abortion rights wondering about other legal avenues that could ensure reproductive freedom. Might the Constitution guarantee abortion access as a First Amendment, religious right?

Many Americans are surprised by the notion that a religious tradition could permit or even mandate the termination of a pregnancy. They assume all religions endorse the conservative Christian view that life begins at conception, rendering abortion akin to murder.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/12/first-amendment-could-save-abortion-rights/

12.05.2022

14th Amendment

American Civil Liberties Union

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby

First Amendment

Henry Hyde

National Council of Jewish Women

National Right to Life Committee

Rachel Kranson

Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

religious freedom

Religious Freedom Restoration Act

right to privacy

Roe v. Wade

U.S. Supreme Court

‘We’re not backing down’: the Texas church fighting for abortion rights

In the face of a draconian abortion ban in effect for more than three months, the mission has only grown stronger for a progressive congregation

Mary Tuma in Austin
Mon 20 Dec 2021

In the late 60s, the burgeoning movement to legalize US abortion state by state found an unlikely yet loyal ally – a contingent of women at the First Unitarian Universalist church in Dallas, Texas.

In lieu of knitting sessions and bake sales, the church’s Women’s Alliance advocated for abortion rights and even had a hand in legally supporting Roe v Wade, the pivotal US supreme court case that protects abortion care in the US as a constitutional right.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/20/texas-church-fighting-abortion-rights

USA – Religious abortion rights supporters fight for access

Holly Meyer, Associated Press
Nov. 28, 2021

On the day the Supreme Court hears arguments in a Mississippi abortion ban case, Sheila Katz plans to be at a nearby church.

It is where the Jewish organization she leads is helping to host a morning interfaith service in support of abortion rights. That gathering, and a planned rally outside the court, are among the ways the National Council of Jewish Women and like-minded faith groups are challenging the erosion of abortion access in the U.S.

Continued: https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2021/11/28/religious-abortion-rights-supporters/8786118002/

How extremist Christian theology is driving the right-wing assault on democracy

The Texas abortion law is one step toward the true goal of Christian dominionism: Destroying democratic government

By PAUL ROSENBERG
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 31, 2021

Progressive policies and positions are supposed to be rooted in reality and hard evidence. But that's not always the case when it comes to the culture wars that have such an enormous impact on our politics — especially not since the unexpected evangelical embrace of Donald Trump in 2016, culminating in the "pro-life" death cult of anti-vaccine, COVID-denying religious leaders. If this development perplexed many on the left, it was less surprising to a small group of researchers who have been studying the hardcore anti-democratic theology known as dominionism that lies behind the contemporary Christian right, and its far-reaching influence over the last several decades.

Continued: https://www.salon.com/2021/10/31/how-extremist-christian-theology-is-driving-the-right-wing-on-democracy/

‘Two Americas’: Aid groups prepare for more women needing to cross state lines for abortions

Organizations are strategizing for the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and a future where even more women seek financial and logistical help.

June 26, 2021 By Adam Edelman

Last summer, Crystal Zaragoza drove a 15-year-old patient from her home in rural Georgia to Virginia, the nearest location where the teen could receive the abortion care she needed.

Zaragoza remained with the patient every step of the way, making the 650-mile trip in one, long 12-hour haul and staying with her at a hotel during and after the procedure before driving back.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/two-americas-aid-groups-prepare-more-women-needing-cross-state-n1272133

USA – How Raphael Warnock Came to Be an Abortion-Rights Outlier

Religious, pro-abortion-rights voices were not always so rare.

Dec 31, 2020
Mary Ziegler

When the Democratic Senate candidate Reverend Raphael Warnock tweeted that he was a “pro-choice pastor,” backlash arrived within minutes. Conservative commentators including Ben Shapiro and Erick Erickson lined up to mock Warnock. A group of conservative Black ministers recently sent Warnock a letter asking him to reconsider his position. Representative Doug Collins, a Republican and an ordained Southern Baptist minister, called the tweet “a lie from the bed of hell.”

In this brief and explosive incident, one of the most significant dynamics of America’s abortion politics was laid bare: the seeming invisibility of pro-choice religious voices. It’s not that pro-choice faith leaders such as Warnock aren’t out there. It’s that, for decades, they’ve been losing the fight for the spotlight.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/liberal-religion-abortion/617491/