The next front in the US abortion wars may be what people are allowed to say about it.
More than two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in the case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, US abortions are on the rise, thanks in large part to the spread of abortion pills and travel across state lines. This has infuriated anti-abortion advocates, who have proposed policies to help the incoming Trump administration curtail the mailing of abortion pills and targeted individuals and groups that help women get out-of-state abortions. In a sign of how the issue is pitting states against one another, Texas earlier this month sued a New York-based doctor who allegedly provided a telehealth abortion to a Texan woman.
In an effort to cut off the avenues remaining to people in states with bans, the anti-abortion movement is looking at ways to control information about how and where to obtain abortions. State lawmakers have filed at least two bills for the 2025 legislative session that target abortion-related speech.
“What now matters in a country where a third of the country bans abortion and other states do not is the flow of people, the flow of pills and the flow of information,” said Rachel Rebouché, an expert in reproductive health law and the dean of Temple University’s law school. “Controlling what people can find out about services that are not legal in their state but are legal somewhere else is part of this larger conversation post-Dobbs.”
Party of “personal choice” and “free speech”
Yeah, they want to control people and control information. They didn’t have to say it out loud. We knew.
It is 100% possible to acquire medication in a free state so that someone who needs it in a slave state has access to it.