New Orleans As the clock ticks down on health insurance subsidies that have been part of the Affordable Care Act, it’s kind of amazing in some ways that divisions over abortion have become a bottleneck resisting resolution. I mean really? The Supreme Court deep-sixed Roe v. Wade, eliminating women’s rights to control their bodies in this area and bouncing it down to the states. More than half of the states have now banned or created barrier to abortions. Anti-abortion activists, their organizations, and political allies have maintained a constant war against Planned Parenthood. Federal laws and regulations block expenditures using federal money already.
It’s hard not to ask, “what more do they want?” The answer is easy: a national ban and end to any right to abortion anywhere in America. Advocates of this program, sometimes calling their program a “right to life,” are willing to push an estimated 10 million people off of health insurance, lowering their life expectancy and quality of life, and in some cases insuring their deaths, which seems the opposite of any right to life. The plain and simple political truth is that may have the votes to scuttle health care subsidies to make their point, but they don’t have the votes to end abortion nationally, or get all that much closer to their goals. Even Trump knew better than to make this promise.
The other big problem is that many women don’t want, what they want. Women are voting with their feet and their fetuses. It must be frustrating that with all for their victories, the number of US abortion continues to rise.
Some are hitting the road to deal with their pregnancies. A recent new item focused on the small town of Carbondale, Illinois, that has become a mecca for this kind of health tourism. In fact, Illinois leads the nation in out-of-state abortions because of its proximity to Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana, and Mississippi, all of which have bans.
Women aren’t just burning gas and jumping on planes to manage unplanned or unwanted pregnancies, they are also keeping the postal service and delivery companies busy. One in four abortions in the United States now takes place through telehealth — with pills that people order online. Take Texas for example, where abortion is banned in almost all circumstances, but roughly 35,800 people got abortions in the state in 2024 via a telehealth provider. Some of the Texas pols must have their hair on fire about this. Their attorney general, always ready to join any fray that might get him publicity, tried to block the ability for women to receive the ways and means in the mail. It didn’t go well for them. A judge in New York State dismissed the lawsuit in the first legal challenge by Texas, against shield laws intended to protect health care providers who send abortion pills to patients in states with abortion bans.
There are lessons these activists could learn from the long fight for prohibition of alcohol in the United States a hundred years ago. That fight was carried under religious and moral banners as well, and was more effective, winning the 18th Amendment blocking the sale of liquor everywhere. The problem then, as now, is that they may have won the political battle, but were unable to impose their will. Many kept drinking, because some found loopholes, others were willing to break the law, and in 1933, the 21st Amendment to the constitution was ratified repealing the 18th.
It’s hard to legislate morals on other people, especially on matters that have such an impact on an individual and family’s life and future. I read a book recently, Pushback: The 2,500-Year Fight to Thwart Women by Restricting Abortion. This back and forth has been going on for a long, long time, and women, sometimes with overt or tacit support of government and authorities, have pushed forward continuously in pursuing their lives and often protecting their families economically as well.
Anti-abortionists are likely to pay a price for the collateral damage being inflicted in their crusade as well, as we are seeing in the healthcare fight. What they don’t want to acknowledge is that for women, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”