Abortion Access: Women Fight Back in a Post-Dobbs Nation

Reproductive rights, abortion access, and a woman’s right to choose. Our nation has heard debates surrounding these topics for a long time, becoming more intense since the Dobbs decision fundamentally changed the lives of women around the country. While the far right continues to claim that they want to protect women, their forty-year campaign to get the Supreme Court to repeal the nearly 50-year-old right to abortion has had the opposite effect.

Amber Nicole Thurman was 28 years old. She lived in Georgia and had a young son she loved. She found out she was pregnant in 2022 and having just found stability in her life with her son, she decided she wanted to get an abortion. Unfortunately, Georgia had new abortion restrictions in place that forced her to travel to North Carolina. After getting stuck in unexpected standstill traffic, she had arrived 15 minutes late and due to increased demand, the clinic was unable to help her. She went to her next best option: the abortion pill. While the abortion pill (mifepristone and misoprostol) is overwhelmingly safe in most cases, Thurman experienced a rare complication that resulted in her needing to go to the hospital. There, she faced the terrible reality of the new Dobbs world; doctors who didn’t know if they could legally operate on her, a waiting period that made her sepsis worse, and eventually, an operation that came too late. She died on the operating table on August 19, 2022 – as first documented by ProPublica, the investigative journalism website.

As of early October, Georgia has reinstated their near-total abortion ban after the ban had been put on hold in the wake of Thurman’s death.

Abortion Bans and The Ballot

Across the country, stories like this have spurred a historic blowback by millions of abortion rights activists determined to fight back. Currently, there are 13 states that have total abortion bans with extremely limited exceptions; 28 additional states have abortion bans based on gestational duration. More than 1 in 3 women of reproductive age, about 23 million women, live in states with abortion bans meaning all of these women are unable to access critical reproductive care in-state. In order for a woman to be able to obtain an abortion, she has to travel to another state, typically over many miles, and pay out of pocket to get an abortion, which can cost between $500 – $2,000, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

In the midterm elections of 2022 and 2023, voters in four states decided to codify the right to an abortion in their state constitutions through ballot initiatives. Ohio, a red state, and Michigan, a swing state, were ones where voters chose to protect the right to an abortion. In the three other states (Montana, Kansas, and Kentucky) where abortion restrictions were put to the ballot, the public voted against them, showing the country that when put to a vote, the people want abortion access to stand. In the 2024 General Election on November 5th, 11 ballot initiatives in 10 states (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota) will put the question of protecting the right to an abortion to the test again.

Texas: Women Harmed under Strict Abortion Ban

Texas has one of the strictest abortion laws to date, with abortion being completely banned except for in very limited circumstances. Josseli Barnica wanted to have a child, but on September 3, 2021, she found out that her fetus would not survive the pregnancy. She experienced 40 hours of labor, exposing herself to possible infection because the doctors had to wait until the fetus had no heartbeat. Barnica died three days later due to a preventable infection in her uterus. She was also only 28 and left behind a daughter and a husband. Stories like this are not uncommon across the country – as reported by ProPublica.

A group of women in Texas challenged the state’s abortion law in a case that went before the Texas Supreme Court in Zurawski v. State of Texas. Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in the case, was joined by nine other women who had experienced pregnancy complications that were met with the vague and confusing guidelines of the Texas abortion ban. The case dealt with specifically the vagueness behind what qualifies as an “imminent” threat to a woman’s life. Zurawski had endured prolonged suffering and near-fatal sepsis while waiting for her life to be “close enough” to death for the physicians to perform an abortion. The Texas Supreme Court ruled against Zurawski. The Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton “applauded” the court’s decision and said he would continue to do all he can to “protect mothers and babies”. Zurawski wanted a child, but was told by doctors that her baby would not survive outside of the womb. Now, she may never have another child again because she had to wait so long for an abortion to be performed that one of her fallopian tubes is permanently closed. Is stripping a woman of her bodily autonomy and ability to have children really protection?

Idaho, Oklahoma and EMTALA

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) was passed by Congress in 1986. It stated that hospitals receiving Medicare or Medicaid funding had to do everything in their power to stabilize an individual whose life or health is at risk; if they were unequipped to do so, they had to transport the patient to another hospital that could. Idaho challenged the EMTALA requirement in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. While a woman’s right to abortion was overturned by this very Court, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that the EMTALA could be invoked to give a woman an abortion in a life-threatening situation.

While this was a victory for abortion rights activists, Oklahoma had the opposite experience when it came to abortion and the EMTALA. Jaci Statton filed a complaint with the US Department of Health and Human Services about being denied abortion care services in Oklahoma when she was told that her baby would not survive, and she might be at risk of death as well. However, the Department did not find the hospital’s denial to be in violation of federal law under EMTALA. What this example shows is that trying to gain access to abortion care under a federal law that does not specifically outline the right to an abortion can cause further confusion and complication for those trying to seek an abortion. Until there is a law that explicitly confirms a woman’s right to abortion, women will continue to press court cases and ever-changing guidelines that make the process unpredictable and possibly dangerous.

Disproportionate Effects of Abortion Restrictions on Women of Color

About one in four women will have an abortion before age 45. A large number of these women are Latinx, Black, and low-income individuals. About 30% of Latinas and 29% of Black women have reported needing access to an abortion clinic and about 71% of patients at abortion clinics report being low income. The maternal health crisis in the U.S., caused by poor access to health and bias by providers, disproportionately affects women of color. Abortion bans and restrictions will only further exacerbate this crisis by denying women the right to make autonomous choices and forcing her to carry a pregnancy to term.

If a woman has to endure a forced pregnancy, there will be additional complications that could arise. Medical implications, such as eclampsia or sepsis, could affect the physical well-being of a woman. Trauma of being forced to carry out a pregnancy, one of the most painful experiences one can go through, could greatly impact a woman’s mental health. The financial implications could last for decades after, as it has been shown that women are more likely to live in poverty if they are forced to carry a pregnancy to term than if they weren’t. All of these implications will disproportionately affect women of color and because of this, this issue is not just about reproductive freedom, but also about how abortion restrictions are a part of a systemically racist healthcare and governmental system.

Amber Nicole Thurman and Josseli Barnica did not have to die. Amanda Zurawski and the nine other women in the Texas case did not have to risk their lives and their ability to have children. Their autonomous choices should never have been taken away. The people that loved them did not have to watch these women suffer because of laws that were enacted to strip women of their power. We as a nation need to understand that that is why we are fighting over this. If we do not want to go back, we have to keep advocating for a woman’s right to choose what she wants to do with her own reproductive healthcare decisions and allow physicians to provide that necessary care without criminal implications. Reproductive freedom is vital for women’s health and lives and we cannot stop fighting until that truth is realized within the law.

By: Caitlin Kulperger Government Relations Intern

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