This story by Sofia Resnick appeared on Colorado Newsline on June 21, 2023. It’s part of a special States Newsroom series on abortion access one year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion. We are sharing it in three parts.
In April, a Reddit user in Alabama posted a breathless message to the abortion subreddit the morning after learning she was pregnant. She guessed she was early, two or three weeks maybe.
“there’s a clinic in GA about 3 hours away. They said they will do it as long as no heartbeat is found on the ultrasound. If they find a heartbeat what do I do then??”
Alabama, where abortion is a crime, is surrounded by states with abortion bans. But nearby Georgia currently allows a tiny window, which shuts once the embryo’s cardiac activity registers on an ultrasound. This happens generally by six weeks’ gestation, and the user was running out of time. And now she was sick to her stomach and passing gelatinous blood clots.
This very active subreddit is moderated around the clock by the Online Abortion Resource Squad, a group of mostly volunteers that debunk abortion misinformation and help users navigate a labyrinth of abortion bans and restrictions. The end of federal abortion rights changed access nationwide. Even ending a wanted pregnancy is now more difficult based on your income, how far along you are, and your state’s ever-changing abortion laws.
In a plot twist for the user in Alabama, it turned out she had likely miscarried.
“UPDATE!!!!! My uterus is empty,” she wrote. “Basically alabama politicians made me drive across state lines and pay $250 because I was too scared to go to my regular doctor.”
But then there’s the Reddit user who described weeping in a Planned Parenthood clinic because her pregnancy measured just a few days beyond its 19.6-week cutoff.
Staff helped her make an appointment at another clinic. “I really want this to be over with,” she wrote. “Now to just figure out transportation for next Saturday. Easy enough. *fingers crossed*”
It’s been a year since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that states could criminalize all or most abortions, and now 15 states fully or mostly ban the procedure, while others have begun enacting gestational limits and other restrictions. That’s left the hundreds of thousands of U.S. women and minors who annually seek abortions forced to travel if they can, overwhelming the abortion clinics in states where it’s legal.
This has led to astronomical patient costs and major care delays.
As a result, abortions in the second and third trimester of pregnancy appear to be on the rise, abortion providers, public health researchers, and patient advocates told States Newsroom. Many patients, they say, are experiencing the higher risks of complication, anxiety, and trauma that sometimes come with abortion later in pregnancy. And advocates say this situation is likely to get worse, with an abortion-provider shortage and states continuing to throw up new legislative barriers.
“Right now, in any state, there’s just no scenario where people aren’t getting delayed because of wait times for appointments,” said Ariella Messing, a PhD candidate in bioethics and health policy from Johns Hopkins University, who founded OARS.
Abortion providers and support groups are reporting delays in seeing patients and higher demand for help. (Gloria Rebecca Gomez/States Newsroom)
Messing told States Newsroom she spends about 80 hours a week managing the abortion subreddit and helping connect people to abortion providers and financial and practical support. OARS has been monitoring the subreddit since 2019, but activity spiked after Texas outlawed most abortions in 2021. Since Dobbs, it’s exploded. Messing said OARS decided to keep r/abortion open during the Reddit blackout protest.
Some of the abortion cases are so complicated and medically necessary that Messing, who previously worked as a case manager for the Baltimore Abortion Fund, personally gets involved, sometimes spending a whole day trying to help someone desperate to terminate a pregnancy under a ticking clock.
The woman for whom it took eight weeks to terminate a pregnancy that had become dangerous kept Messing up at night, until that person terminated, finally, at 27 weeks.
“This wasn’t how they should be getting care — by a random stranger on Reddit,” Messing said.
While the true extent to which Dobbs has prevented people from getting abortions remains to be seen, emerging research suggests that women and minors are increasingly unable to end a pregnancy, especially people of color and people living in poverty.
The Society of Family Planning has been measuring the number of abortions reported by abortion clinics and hospitals. In the nine months after the Dobbs decision, the rate of medication abortion jumped, but overall, providers reported more than 25,000 fewer abortions nationwide.
The Society’s latest #WeCount report did not capture how many people self-managed outside the formal health care system, or how far along patients were. But University of California San Francisco professor Ushma Upadhyay, who co-chairs the #WeCount project, said it would be logical for gestational ages to be rising, given the increased obstacles in accessing care quickly.
Additionally, brand-new research from the university’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program finds a nationwide increase in providers offering abortion later in gestation than they were previously due to rising demand, as well as more clinics offering telehealth medication abortion. But the demand is still overshadowing the need, especially later in pregnancy.
“The states where there are bans now, there were very few clinics in those states, because there were so many restrictions,” Upadhyay said. “But those clinics that were open did offer abortion care till later, usually midway of the second trimester. … So, right now there’s huge swaths of the country where later abortion is simply unavailable.”
Part of the problem is that so few clinics in the U.S., especially post Dobbs, go beyond 20 weeks’ gestation. The vast majority are independent clinics not part of the Planned Parenthood network, which has more resources and political clout than the independents.
There is a tiny cluster of clinics that provide abortions in the third trimester, on a case-by-case basis. One is in Boulder, Colorado, and the others are concentrated in and around Washington D.C., which has become a major national abortion destination.
Abortion providers say they are scheduling visits weeks out.
“Anecdotally, we are seeing in some places, people are being pushed, or people are having to delay their care, and it has resulted in people having procedures one to two weeks later than they then we saw the previous year,” said Melissa Fowler, chief program officer of the National Abortion Federation, which provides resources for abortion clinics and funds some patient costs. “And of course, we’re also seeing a delay with people who need later care as well…”