Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
Meanwhile, nine states still have pre-Roe abortion bans on their books that will now become active, and another 11 have bans on early gestational age abortions that until now had been blocked, Guttmacher says.
Black women disproportionately live in these states and will be more likely to suffer illness and mortality without the right to the full range of reproductive health care.
RELATED: 4 Things That Could Happen if Roe V. Wade is Overturned
“We know that with every barrier that gets put between women and reproductive health care, we see that women’s outcomes worsen,” says Dr. Dana Gossett, chair of the department of obstetrics & gynecology at NYU Langone Health in New York City. “One that we anticipate is that there will be women who simply cannot access a desired and needed abortion because they don’t have the resources to go beyond their local environment. They don’t have the ability to drive or fly to another state, or the ability to seek care elsewhere.”
But there will be more fallout.
“When barriers are put up between women and abortion services, the gestational age at which women ultimately receive their abortion is later,” Gossett notes. “Legal abortion is much safer than childbirth at all gestational ages at which its conducted, but the risks do increase as you move from the first to the second trimester, and so women who delay the procedure because they can’t access the care they need will be assuming greater risk to themselves.”
Several organizations have been working to provide online access to medication abortions in anticipation of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
“That is an option that allows women to have a private, confidential consultation with a health care provider who provides abortion services, possibly not in their state or location, and can receive pills by mail that can safely accomplish an early abortion,” Gossett explains. “That’s one thing I suspect will continue to grow as local access to health care providers offering abortion services diminishes.”
Going forward, women will need to be much more careful with contraception and family planning, particularly if they have risk factors that make pregnancy a potentially life-threatening condition, says Stone, who is president of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, a medical association dedicated to high-risk pregnancy care.
Women and their doctors will also face hard choices regarding fetal abnormalities, particularly regarding the expectations of carrying a fetus expected to die after birth, Stone adds.
Some women will face the prospect of either going forward with a dangerous pregnancy or undergoing a high-risk self-induced abortion, Stone shares.
If you find yourself challenged by these difficult decisions, talk with your doctor who can help guide you in making the best possible decision.
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