A year ago, on June 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade, enabling several states across the country to ban or restrict access to abortion. Today, supporters of the pro-choice camp denounce that “warnings have come true”.
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Closures of clinics, endless waiting times and the inability for women to terminate their pregnancies early despite increasing risks to their health: these are the consequences of this legal reversal that the “proponents” feared and denounced, CBS News reported.
US media reports that at least 25 states have either banned abortion outright or restricted its access.
In the past 12 months, 13 states have enacted near-total abortion bans, and at least a dozen others have passed new laws restricting access.
In the country’s Midwest and South, states like Illinois and Virginia have become islands of abortion access surrounded by other states with more restrictive laws. As a result, their clinics saw an increase in the number of patients who came from a neighboring state to seek their services.
For example, Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri Medical Center operates another center in Fairview Heights, Illinois, where wait times have dropped from two or three days to nearly three weeks. According to CBS News, more than 85% of the abortion patients at this center are from out of state.
New restrictions are coming
Illinois, Florida, North Carolina and Colorado have seen significant increases in the total number of abortions performed in the nine months since the ruling, according to a new report from WeCount.
Some states will soon join those who have enforced restrictive abortion laws. This is particularly the case in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis passed legislation in April banning it after six weeks of pregnancy. Also last May, the North Carolina General Assembly voted to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto and ban abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy.
In Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, abortion is completely banned with few exceptions, and in Georgia it is allowed for up to six weeks.
Vice President Kamala Harris is set to speak Saturday in Charlotte, North Carolina, to push for statewide legislation to protect abortion rights — a prospect currently unlikely given a deeply divided Congress.
Ms. Harris will deliver her speech a week before the new Republican-backed law goes into effect in the state that would ban abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, according to Portal, up from 20 weeks at the time of this writing.