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 – Abortion Saved Her. Now It Could Cost Her Freedom.

As the Trump administration cuts funding for Planned Parenthood, one court offers Black Women in the South a legal lifeline.

by Angela Dennis
April 21, 2025

Kneeling on the cold bathroom floor of her apartment, Kisha clutched the pregnancy test she had just picked up from the Walgreens down the street. She waited for a single blue line to appear. Instead, there were two.

“When I looked down at that test, I didn’t believe it,” she said. “I told myself there was just no way. This can’t be happening to me.”

She was pregnant at 41 years old.

Continued: https://capitalbnews.org/planned-parenthood-cuts-trump-black-women-abortion-bans/

USA – A New Normal for Abortion Funds Without ‘Roe’

Despite a constantly shifting legal landscape and donations tapering off, abortion funds are helping as many people as they can with limited resources.

JUL 22, 2024
SUSAN BUTTENWIESER

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, people have been reaching out to abortion funds for help in historic numbers. In the first year after the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the National Network of Abortion Funds, a nationwide network of 100 abortion funds, financially supported more than 100,000 people seeking abortion care. NNAF disbursed over $36 million to people seeking abortions, and an additional $10 million in practical support funding, which includes transportation, lodging, and child care.

The decision also resulted in abortion funds receiving unprecedented amounts in donations. An influx of donations to Indigenous Women Rising, an abortion fund dedicated to Native and Indigenous people in the United States and Canada, allowed the organization to double its staff and expand employee benefits.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2024/07/22/a-new-normal-for-abortion-funds-without-roe/

USA – How Abortion’s Legal Landscape Post-Roe is Causing Fear and Confusion

We spoke with seven reproductive rights organizations — here’s what we found.

By NICOLE LEWIS and AALA ABDULLAHI
June 1, 2024

For years before the Supreme Court upended Roe v. Wade, the landmark precedent protecting abortion access, a network of conservative Christians was slowly and methodically stacking the courts through political means. “[W]hat Trump and his Republican allies had done was to change the country by leveraging political force to conquer the courts,” Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer wrote in their recent recounting of the network’s maneuvering for The New York Times Magazine.“

Their policy arms churned out legal arguments and medical studies. Their lawyers argued their cases, and their judges ruled on them,” Dias and Lerer explained.

Continued: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/06/01/abortion-supreme-court-roe-dobbs

USA – Where does the fight to stop travel bans for abortion stand?

Nov. 13, 2023
By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press

A federal judge and the U.S. Department of Justice this week said that states are going too far by trying to block people from helping others cross state lines for abortion.

A ruling in Idaho and the federal government taking sides in an Alabama lawsuit are far from the final word, but they could offer clues on whether an emerging area of abortion regulation may eventfully hold up in court.

Continued: https://www.gulflive.com/news/2023/11/where-does-the-fight-to-stop-travel-bans-for-abortion-stand.html

13.11.2023

Commentary

abortion trafficking

abortion travel bans

anti-choice ordinances

Debora K. Grasham

Melissa Murray

National Right to Life Committee

Steve Marshall

travel bans on abortion

traveling for abortion

This Alabama Health Clinic Is Under Threat. It Doesn’t Provide Abortions.

Former abortion clinics in red states are trying to pivot to other services after Dobbs. But they’re finding it’s not so easy.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
05/29/2023

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Patients arriving for an appointment at the West Alabama Women’s Center one year ago would brave a gauntlet of chanting protesters, skirt an idling police car, take seats in a crowded waiting room and wait for one of the clinic’s dozen busy staff members to help them terminate a pregnancy. Over the clinic’s nearly 30-year history, visits also included the risk of being shot, bombed or rammed by a vehicle.

But when Abigail arrived on a Tuesday morning in April, nearly 11 months after the fall of Roe v. Wade, the parking lot was so quiet you could hear the clinic’s windchime tinkling faintly in the hot breeze.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/05/29/alabama-abortion-clinic-problem-00096020

USA – Abortion access advocacy groups slam bill allowing women to be charged with homicide

The bill goes against Alabama’s 2019 law, which expressly states that women who obtain abortions are not to be prosecuted.

By JACOB HOLMES
May 15, 2023

When Alabama passed legislation in 2019 to criminalize abortions in the state, Republicans were clear: the women receiving abortions were not to be criminalized.

But just a year after Roe v. Wade was reversed, Rep. Ernie Yarbrough, R-Trinity, has introduced a bill, HB454, doing just that, eliminating a section in the homicide code preventing prosecutors from charging women for homicide for having an abortion.

Continued: https://www.alreporter.com/2023/05/15/abortion-access-advocacy-groups-slam-bill-allowing-women-to-be-charged-with-homicide/

She was one of Alabama’s last abortion doctors. Then they came for everything she had

Dr Leah Torres has endured the ire of the anti-abortion movement without backing down – but now she faces her most daunting challenge

by Poppy Noor
Wed 22 Mar 2023

Dr Leah Torres doesn’t tell people what she does when she meets them, which makes it hard to make friends. She removes her name from every piece of trash before she puts it out for recycling, in case people walking past see her name and find out where she lives. If a package addressed to her arrives on her porch, she calls everyone she knows to identify who sent it before she opens it – it could be a bomb.

Once, coming back from work in the piercing August Alabama sun, she noticed a gray sedan parked in her driveway. Instinctively, she fled to a neighbor’s house – she barely knew him – but asked if he could walk her home anyway. The car turned out to be a stranger’s; the driver had just pulled over to send a text message. “Still, you never know,” says Torres, her big, almond-shaped eyes conveying concern.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/22/alabama-last-abortion-doctor-leah-torres

Pressure and Stress Intensify for Abortion Providers Post-Roe

NOVEMBER 29, 2022
Susan Buttenwieser

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in late June, providers of abortion care have been dealing with emotional devastation, managing severe staff burnout, the possibility of facing criminal charges, and increased harassment from protestors.

Some providers also contended with the prospect of losing their jobs when abortion became illegal in their state, at times within hours of the decision, forcing their clinics to close down. By October, 66 clinics across 15 states had been forced to stop offering abortion care or had closed down entirely. Before the June 24 Dobbs decision, those 15 states had 79 clinics that provided abortion care; by October 2, that number had dropped to 13, all located in one state, Georgia.

Continued: https://womensmediacenter.com/news-features/pressure-and-stress-intensify-for-abortion-providers-post-roe

Forced Parenthood and Failing Safety Nets: This Is Life in Post-Roe America

The states with the strictest abortion laws are doing the least to help poor families. What could possibly go wrong?
Abby Vesoulis
August 29, 2022

Melissa Kearse, a 38-year-old single mother of five, has never had an abortion. She never wanted one. “I come from a very religious background,” she explains, “where my-body-my-choice is not necessarily my body and my choice.”

But in her home state of Georgia, any choice she did have was stripped away by the state’s conservative legislature, which in 2019 passed a trigger ban on abortion after six weeks gestation that took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this past June. Though Kearse is personally opposed to having an abortion, she is exasperated by Georgia’s call to meddle in this decision, particularly as someone who has struggled to provide for her family and been repeatedly let down by the state’s social welfare programs. “I don’t feel comfortable with somebody telling me what I can and cannot do if you’re not helping me provide,” she says. “If I got pregnant again, I would drown.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/08/abortion-bans-states-social-safety-net-dobbs/