Michelle Oberman spoke with WBUR in Texas to discuss what happens when the right to an abortion is not guaranteed in every state, which might happen if the Supreme Court decides to uphold Mississippi’s law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The same segment ran on KQED radio in the Bay Area.
“Let’s start by observing that access to abortion is already fairly limited in states like Mississippi and throughout much of the southeastern United States, and not a lot of places one can go to terminate a pregnancy. But what the immediate effect is there’s that imposition of the risk of criminal liability on the woman who’s pregnant, and on anybody who assists her. So what we quickly end up with is a completely stratified system where those with money will be able to travel to the states where it remains legal to end a pregnancy, and those who don’t have the funds will be forced into continuing a pregnancy or forced into resorting to online abortion medications and ending pregnancies on their own, possible risking prosecution.
