The Trust Women Wichita abortion clinic is busier than ever since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June. Its patient load has more than doubled, staff more than tripled and it went from offering abortions part-time to five days a week, most weeks.
Still, it’s nowhere near meeting demand.
One Monday in December, the clinic got 16,000 calls; some patients try the line up to 200 times before getting through. Even then, they might be told there’s no available appointments there, or at any of Kansas’s five other abortion clinics.
On the 50th anniversary of Roe, which falls this Sunday, Trust Women is emblematic of the new abortion landscape in America. The landmark ruling that legalized abortion across the U.S. is no longer the law of the land. Since June, states have had the power to severely limit abortion, and around a dozen have passed near-total bans. A few more, like Georgia and Florida, have restrictions beyond what would’ve been allowed under Roe.
Almost immediately, the number of legal abortions fell by 6% nationwide, according to an analysis of data from July and August by the Society of Family Planning. But in pockets of America — including states like Kansas, where abortion up to 22 weeks remains legal — demand surged as people traveled from nearby states with newly restrictive laws.
Over the summer, Kansas saw a 36% increase in the number of abortions provided. North Carolina, Colorado and Illinois saw similarly big jumps.
“We cannot absorb all the patients from Texas, from Oklahoma,” said Ashley Brink, Trust Women Wichita’s director. “There’s nothing that we could do to meet the need.”
When the court made its landmark Roe ruling in January 1973, the New York Times called it a “historic resolution of a fiercely controversial issue.” The intervening 50 years have shown that the matter is anything but resolved, and still extremely divisive.
As legal abortion clinics started popping up across the country, anti-abortion legislators and activists went to work pushing back against the change. Over the past five decades, U.S. states passed more than a thousand laws that aimed to make it difficult for clinics to operate as they tried to get the court to reconsider Roe.
At the same time, clinics became the target of violence. From 1977 through 2021, there were 11 murders, 42 bombings and 196 arson attacks targeting abortion providers, patients and volunteers, data from the National Abortion Federation shows. Just this week, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Illinois was intentionally set alight.
The 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe hasn’t settled things, either. A state-by-state legal fight is playing out in courtrooms around the country and in some places, like Arizona and Georgia, back-and-forth court rulings have changed what’s permissible from week to week.
Amid the uncertainty, Desert Star Family Planning, a Phoenix-based clinic that’s been operating for almost 10 years, has had trouble hiring and retaining nurses and medical assistants. Owner DeShawn Taylor has cut appointments at the clinic down to two or three days per week, from five days a week and a few extra Saturdays each month. She’s also started a consultancy business to make up for lost income from the clinic.
“It was really a day-by-day scenario for a while,” Taylor said.
While the ruling has made it harder to get an abortion in the U.S., it’s not 1972 again. Back then, just four states allowed legal abortion, while 46 states had total or near-total bans. Tens of thousands of women would travel to California, New York, and DC to get procedures each year. Those unable to make or afford long trips underwent illegal procedures, which sent thousands to the hospital each year and killed hundreds more.
