Judicial bypass attorneys' experiences with abortion stigma in Texas courts

Exploring the emotional costs of abortion travel in the United States due to legal restriction

OBJECTIVES

Pregnant people have traveled across state and national borders for the purpose of abortion since at least the 1960s. Scholarship has robustly documented the financial and logistical costs associated with travel, but less work has examined the emotional costs of abortion travel. We investigate whether abortion travel has emotional costs and, if so, how they come about.

STUDY DESIGN

We conducted in-depth interviews with 30 women who had to travel across state borders in the United States for abortion care because of their gestation. We analyzed findings thematically.

RESULTS

Interviewees described having to travel to obtain abortion care as emotionally burdensome, causing distress, stress, anxiety, and shame. Because they had to travel, they were compelled to disclose their abortion to others and obtain care in an unfamiliar place and away from usual networks of support, which engendered emotional costs. Additionally, travel induced feelings of shame and exclusion because it stemmed from a law-based denial of in-state abortion care, which some experienced as marking them as deviant or abnormal.

CONCLUSIONS

People who have to travel for abortion care experience emotional costs alongside financial and logistical costs. The circumstances of that travel-specifically, being forced to travel because of legal restriction and service unavailability-are foundational to the ensuing emotional burdens. Findings add to the emerging literature on how laws and other structures produce the stigmatization of abortion at interpersonal and individual levels.

IMPLICATIONS

With abortion bans following the overturning of the right to abortion and existing gestational limits in the US, more people will have to travel for abortion care. Attention to the emotional costs of abortion travel can help providers understand what their patients may be experiencing when they present for care.

Use of Judicial Bypass of Mandatory Parental Consent to Access Abortion and Judicial Bypass Denials, Florida and Texas, 2018-2021

Objectives. To describe minors' use of judicial bypass to access abortion and the percentage of bypass petitions denied in Florida and Texas. Methods. Data were derived from official state statistics on judicial bypasses and abortions by age in Texas and Florida; abortions in Texas among minor nonresidents were estimated. In addition, judicial bypass petitions as a percentage of abortions received by minors and judicial bypass denials as a percentage of petitions were calculated. Results. Between 2018 and 2021, minors received 5527 abortions in Florida and an estimated 5220 abortions in Texas. Use of judicial bypass was stable at 14% to 15% in Florida and declined from 14% to 10% in Texas. Among petitions for judicial bypass, denials increased in Florida from 6% to a maximum of 13% and remained stable in Texas at 5% to 7%. Conclusions. Minors' use of judicial bypass in Texas and Florida is substantial. The percentage of denials is higher and increasing in Florida. Public Health Implications. Minors who need confidential abortion care may now be forced to seek judicial bypass far from home. Parental involvement laws in states that do not ban abortion will compound barriers to abortion care. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(3):316-319. https://doi.org/10.2105/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307173).

Abortion Stigma: Imagined Consequences for People Seeking Abortion Care in the United States

Prior to and since the 2022 Dobbs decision, U.S. state laws have endorsed individuals surveilling and punishing those associated with abortion care. This practice presents an urgent need to understand the characteristics of abortion stigma, particularly the perspectives of individuals with stigmatizing beliefs. To examine the concept and characteristics of abortion stigma, we interviewed 55 individuals about whether they thought there should be consequences for getting an abortion and, if so, what the consequences should be. Adults from three states (Michigan, Kansas, and Arizona) were purposively sampled to include a range of abortion identities and levels of religious engagement. We used reflexive thematic analysis to code and interpret the data. Participants imagined consequences including financial penalties, incarceration, and forced sterilization. Three themes highlighted how abortion was described as violating the law, women's gender roles, and religious doctrine; accordingly, abortion was imagined as deserving of negative consequences, although abortion was legal in all states during data collection. We argue that these imagined consequences relied on carceral logics and interconnected sexist, racist, and classist stereotypes that reflect and reproduce abortion stigma. This study deepens the understanding of abortion stigma from the perspective of the stigmatizer, underscoring the danger of legislation grounded in stigmatizing beliefs.