The legal challenges that are currently being brought forward in Louisiana and Georgia will determine how far persons living in the South will have to travel to get abortion treatment.
Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court earlier this summer, virtually every state in the Southeast has passed legislation that either outlaw the operation entirely or restricts its use to all stages of pregnancy other than those in their early stages.
Advocates for women’s rights to abortion are, however, contesting these limits in state court to get them overturned.
Both the so-called trigger ban in Louisiana, which made the procedure illegal in its entirety and did not provide any exceptions for rape or incest, and the ban on late-term abortions in Georgia, which prohibits the practice beyond around six weeks into a pregnancy, are currently in effect.
After it was stopped by an appeals court and the prohibition was brought back into effect, providers petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court to restore order from a lower court that blocks the prohibition.
In the meanwhile, on Monday, an administrative court in Atlanta will deliberate on whether or not to temporarily postpone the implementation of the six-week restriction until the following steps in the legal case are taken.
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According to Jalessah Jackson, the interim executive director of Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, an abortion fund that provides financial support for abortion-seekers in several southern states, “Georgia,” and more specifically Atlanta, Georgia, “was a hub for abortion access for people all across the southeast.” “Georgia” refers to the state of Georgia, while “Atlanta, Georgia” refers to the city of Atlanta.
According to statements made by Jackson to CNN, Georgia served as “that space” where individuals could come and have alternatives regarding the location of the abortion they desired.
Because of the limited scope that we have right now as a result of the six-week prohibition, this has significantly damaged people’s ability to obtain medical treatment throughout the entire region.
The decision handed down by the Supreme Court made it possible for states located throughout the South and the Midwest to try to enforce bans on abortion that lasted six weeks or completely prohibited the procedure altogether.
Since then, dozens of abortion clinics have shut down, and a study published in July revealed that in the month since the verdict, the number of clinics offering abortions has decreased from 71 to 28 in the 11 states that are seeking to enact such stringent restrictions.
According to the findings of the study that was conducted by the reproductive rights think tank the Guttmacher Institute, the seven states in which there are currently no abortion clinics operating are Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas. These states were responsible for 80,500 abortions in the year 2020.
If things continue as they are, people who want to get abortions will have to travel hundreds of miles to get them.
The closest clinic to many women in the South may be in Kansas, Illinois, North Carolina, or somewhere else entirely — potentially even across the borders of several states.
This is especially true if the restrictions in Georgia and Louisiana are implemented.
Those who advocate for tighter limitations on abortion contend that lower courts should follow the example set by the United States Supreme Court and defer to legislative bodies when determining the contours of abortion law at the state level.
“The careful, thoughtful studied approach as the Georgia legislature took before and during the 2019 session is the way it needs to be addressed,” said Republican state Rep. Ed Setzler, a sponsor of the 2019 Georgia law that prohibits abortion after the fetal cardiac activity is detected.
This law was passed in Georgia and prohibits abortion after the fetal cardiac activity is detected.
“We recognize life begins at conception but we balanced that with these difficult circumstances and to land where there’s a protection of a child that has a beating heart, that seems to be a reasonable sound middle ground,” he said.
“We recognize life begins at conception but we balanced that with these difficult circumstances and to land where there’s a protection of a child that has a beating heart, that seems
The “important” parts that Georgia and Louisiana have played in the past.
Even before the Roe v. Wade decision was overturned, which made it possible for abortion bans in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and other parts of the South to go into effect, people seeking abortions were travelling to Louisiana and Georgia to obtain the procedure.
This was in part due to the other ways in which states were able to complicate access, even though Roe was still on the books.
According to the National Abortion Federation, there are currently 11 abortion providers operating in the state of Georgia.
This particular state had a clinic infrastructure that was significantly more extensive than what is often found in the South.
Because Atlanta is a major airline hub, medical facilities in Georgia are easily accessible to patients who have the financial means to fly there for the operation.
Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a senior research associate with the Guttmacher Institute, which is in favour of abortion rights, stated that he anticipates seeing “huge increases” in the number of people travelling to seek abortions in the wake of the recent decision made by the United States Supreme Court in the case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The case was heard earlier this year.
“Many of the states that patients have previously travelled to have abortions have now restricted or removed access outright,” he added. “This implies that those seeking care will need to travel even further to obtain it.”
The state of North Carolina, which has a Democratic governor, does not currently have any extreme limits on the treatment, such as a six-week or complete ban, but the state of Florida has a 15-week ban in effect while a court challenge to it is still ongoing.
A federal court injunction that was issued before the Dobbs judgment caused Georgia’s six-week abortion ban to remain on hold for several weeks after the Dobbs decision was handed down.
According to Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director at the Atlanta-based Feminist Women’s Health Center, who told CNN that just from one clinic in Alabama, nearly 100 abortion patients were referred to Georgia providers in the days immediately following the Dobbs decision, travel from patients in other states increased significantly.
Even after the six-week ban was allowed to take effect on July 20, traffic from out-of-state patients has continued, she said.
This is in part because early-pregnancy abortions are allowed under it, and in part, because Georgia’s law has a rape exemption that is not present in Alabama’s outright ban, nor in the six-week bans in Kentucky and Tennessee.
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“When the six-week ban was allowed to go into effect, it certainly has changed how significant a role we can play in the southeast supporting care for neighbouring states, but it has not completely eliminated that need,” said Jackson of the Feminist Women’s Health Center.
“When the six-week ban was allowed to go into effect, it certainly has changed how significant a role we can play in the southeast supporting care for neighbouring states.”
The six-week ban in Texas, which was permitted to go into effect in September of last year, served as a preview of the role that Louisiana will play for access if its prohibition is stopped by courts there.
Patients from the state of Texas made up over two-thirds of the patients seen at the Hope Medical Group for Women clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana. Before the passage of the law in Texas, only 18% of the clinic’s patients were from the state of Texas.
“Louisiana had been this kind of stalwart, it had been providing care to people in the entire region,” said Jenny Ma, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights who is involved in the challenge to the Louisiana trigger ban.
The Center for Reproductive Rights is one of the organizations that is challenging the Louisiana trigger ban.
According to what she told CNN, Louisiana and Georgia “were really significant, and continue to be really vital,” and that’s why these cases are so critical as they continue to attempt to protect access for as long as possible.
