Ohio’s victory on abortion can’t replace what we lost: The federal right to reproductive justice

"As we spoke, blooms of bright red blood edged throughout the white hospital towel. She sat upright in the stretcher. The towel, already saturated, was bunched under her seat. She’d taken the bus one and a half hours to our hospital, and had stuffed these towels into her pants to stem the bleeding, tying a large jacket around her waist. I imagined how it must have felt to bear the stop and start of each bus stop while feeling the warm blood leak out of you.

She was having a miscarriage.

Both she and I were lucky that this happened prior to June 2022, when the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to abortion. Her miscarriage required urgent treatment. The standard care is a procedure called a dilation and evacuation (more often called by its shorthand, D&E). This procedure is equivalent to a surgical abortion. The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision immediately led to an onslaught of state abortion legislation drawing legal borders around when, where, whether and by whom medical treatments can be provided to pregnant patients. A dizzying array of laws now exist.

The recent decision by Ohio voters to constitutionally enshrine the right to abortion access is an example of one of these laws. And though it is critical in securing access to abortion services for Ohioans, it doesn’t replace what we lost: the right to reproductive justice from sea to shining sea.

Across the United States, doctors and patients are still trapped within borders. Gaping differences remain across states in the medical care doctors can provide and patients can receive. Interstate migration for abortion care persists".