The Post-Roe Landscape: States’ Rights Reign Supreme

Protests at the Supreme Court after the Justices released their now infamous Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision. Source for photo: Forbes

At the end of June of 2022, the Supreme Court released its landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision where it overturned the previous Roe v Wade decision, effectively ending the right to an abortion at a federal level. With Congress unable to move on this issue due to filibuster hold ups with the 117th Congress and currently gridlocked in the 118th Congress, abortion access has been cast to the states.

Now, roughly six months later, the post-Roe landscape has shifted. Since this decision, 24 states have banned or are likely to ban abortion. 12 states have nearly-banned abortion, referring to a ban with very limited exceptions, and there are two states where abortion is unavailable, even though a ban is not being enforced. These two states are in North Dakota, where the sole clinic moved to Minnesota, and Wisconsin, where it has proven difficult with enforcement of a pre-Roe ban that the state has on the books. With these developments, I had the opportunity of attending a Planned Parenthood Generation Action (PPGA) panel on access to reproductive healthcare on Tuesday, January 24th, 2023.

While these bans are newer, the reality of a lack of access is not a new concept for marginalized and minority groups. People of color are overrepresented in those seeking abortion services, creating potential harm for these marginalized communities based on these bans.  

“Rights without access are meaningless,” said Simran Singh Jain, the Membership Coordinator for SisterSong, an organization that seeks to improve institutional policies and systems that impact the reproductive lives of marginalized communities. Her statement refers to the idea that the legal right to abortion is not enough, the procedure must also be made available through either health insurance or clinics.

Jain’s statement echoes what many from marginalized communities have been expressing – that they have lived in a post-Roe world even before Roe was overturned. Obtaining an abortion can place many financial stressors on the individual, such as finding childcare for their children at home, potentially missing work, the cost of an abortion for an uninsured individual, and transportation and housing costs. The procedure was nearly impossible to obtain for many minority communities, even when it was still “legal,” meaning there were some states without bans that had no clinics available to perform the procedure. 

Now that more states have banned or restricted abortion access, the burden may not be just financial on these marginalized groups, but life-or-death for some. Doctors have warned that, in states with under-served, marginalized communities, these groups are more likely to partake in unsafe, self-managed abortion attempts that may involve physical harm or ingestion of toxic substances. 

“Thinking about what I went through during that time, it feels like we’re going backwards, not forwards,” said Iliana Santilla, recalling her own experience obtaining an abortion in a pre-Dobbs America. She is the executive director of El Pueblo, a nonprofit organization based in Raleigh, NC, specializing in leadership development for both youth and adults among Wake County’s growing Latinx community.

Santillan’s statement summarizes the fears of older activists, who recall a pre-Roe America and don’t want to go back. With the battle over these rights left to the states, this new development emphasizes the importance of voting in local and state elections more than ever, for both sides of the issue. These local and state elections will now decide the fate of abortion rights in their respective jurisdictions due to the lack of movement at the federal level.