Chaos and fear, one month after Roe v Wade reversal

Severe new restrictions upend reproductive care across the US. Patients report delays for procedures, as doctors fear vague new laws with criminal penalties. A 10-year-old rape victim was forced to travel out of state to terminate a pregnancy. And activists promise more restrictions to come.

- Jessica Glenza

In the month since the supreme court bombshell that ended the right to abortion, as states across the south and midwest embrace their new ability to ban abortion, the consequences have been both chaotic and predictable.

"We're looking at probably about 15 million women living in a state with an abortion ban right now," said Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research organisation. "We could see as much as half of the country without abortion access very soon."

Doctors and lawyers said the upheaval caused by the supreme court's decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization has endangered patients. Dobbs ended federal abortion protections nearly 50 years after Roe v Wade and returned regulation of abortion to states.

Bans at six weeks' gestation or earlier, before most women know they are pregnant, are in force in 12 states as of last week. The bans have forced patients seeking abortions to travel hundreds of kilometres from home.

That travel has placed friends, family and abortion rights organisations in legal jeopardy, as states have criminalised helping people obtain abortions. Other patients have seen routine care for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies delayed, as doctors fear criminal sanctions.