How leaving abortion laws up to the states puts women’s health at risk

From the moment the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022 and overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion, former President Donald Trump, his vice presidential running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, and a slew of Republican lawmakers have stood firm on the idea that the regulation of abortion should be left up to the states.

“What Roe v. Wade did for us is provide federal support for abortion access, and with that gone now, it’s been mayhem across the country,” said Adam Hosey, the policy director of Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania. “In Pennsylvania, we are trying to fight back and push back against anti-abortion attacks.”

Hosey added: “I can see why people think that they don’t want the federal government deciding what we can do with our body but in this case, it’s actually the federal government making sure we have the abundance of choice over our health care options.”

Since the Dobbs decision, 21 states have either banned or severely restricted abortion, while voters in several states have turned to ballot initiatives as a way of protecting reproductive rights. 

Polling has shown that two-thirds of Americans disagree with the Dobbs decision and that voters in a majority of states want abortion to be legal in all or most cases. 

On Oct. 7, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case from President Joe Biden’s administration appealing Texas’ rejection of a federal law that requires providers to perform abortions when needed for pregnant patients in emergency situations. The federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act came up against Texas’ near-total abortion ban. The justices left in place a lower court ruling in Texas’ suit against the administration that charged the federal government with exceeding its authority in the area, and ultimately the issue was unresolved nationally. 

“The Supreme Court’s failure to act to protect the lives and health of pregnant people is shameful,” Reproductive Freedom for All president and CEO Mini Timmaraju said in a statement. “When Trump says decisions about abortion should be left to the states, he’s saying that denying people potentially life-saving, emergency care should be allowed.”

Studies have shown that the reversal of Roe has resulted in dangerous outcomes for women’s reproductive health. 

A study by the Commonwealth Fund health care foundation released in July found that the Dobbs decision “significantly altered both access to reproductive health care services and how providers are able to treat pregnancy complications in the 21 states that ban or restrict abortion access.” 

The report says that bans on abortion have driven providers to leave states, deepened the maternity care crisis, and put access to contraception and infertility treatments at risk. 

Hosey said that history has shown that the federal government is there to protect every American’s rights, no matter which state they live in. 

“I think about Little Rock and school desegregation,” Hosey said. “It took the federal government to step in to lay down the law there where individual states were trying to discriminate and remove folks’ rights to access education.” 

Dozens of states banned same-sex marriage prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which declared same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.

The Dobbs decision also represented a departure from some of the Supreme Court justices’ own past statements. During his 2018 Senate confirmation hearings, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Roe was “settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court.” Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett made similar comments during their Senate confirmation hearings. None of the three committed to leaving Roe in place, however, and all of them voted to overturn Roe. 

Hosey said he hopes voters remember how vital the attorney general race is in the Nov. 5 election, noting that the Pennsylvania attorney general has the power to protect residents of the state from future attacks on abortion rights.

“The attorney general in Pennsylvania is going to be able, to an extent, [to] protect Pennsylvanians, patients, providers, or any patients that are coming from out of state against some of the horrible targeting and criminalization of reproductive health care that we’re going to see from a Trump presidency,” Hosey said.

Former Democratic state legislator and two-term auditor general Eugene DePasquale is running for attorney general against Republican York County district attorney Dave Sunday. 

During a recent debate, DePasquale talked about the abortion his wife needed to save her life after an ectopic pregnancy was discovered.

“That, what was technically an abortion that night, saved Tracy’s life and preserved our ability to have two kids who are now doing great, 24 and 21, respectively,” DePasquale said. “I will always protect a woman’s right to an abortion.”