
Abortion in the South:
Abortion is currently banned on or around 20 weeks, with certain limited exceptions, in: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. In Texas, that limit is six weeks.
Many Southern states are looking to Texas' Senate Bill 8, a new law that effectively bans all abortions past six weeks of pregnancy, as a model for future legislation. The law's restrictions take effect before many know they are pregnant and provide no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
Quick hits:
➡ The Texas law, which took effect September 1, allows anyone to file civil lawsuits with penalties of up to $10,000 in damages against anyone who "aids or abets" in abortion. A majority of conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the law to take effect, because the new civil enforcement mechanism strips the usual procedure for reviewing anti-abortion laws in federal court. Despite a temporary administrative halt, SB 8 is currently in effect.
➡ The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in December in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case that could reinstate a Mississippi law passed in 2018 that would prohibit all abortions after 15 weeks.
➡ Louisiana passed its own 15-week ban on abortions in 2018, attaching the law to Mississippi's. The case challenges Roe v. Wade's 1973 ruling which made abortion legal up to 24 weeks nationwide—a decision that was reaffirmed 20 years later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. If the Supreme Court upholds Mississippi's law, Louisiana's legislation is also set to take effect.
➡ State officials across the South banned most abortions during the pandemic, arguing that it was necessary to free up resources to fight COVID-19. When a federal appeals court allowed Texas to continue its near-total ban on the procedure in April 2020, it forced many seeking abortions to violate stay-at-home orders, crossing state lines into Louisiana for abortive care—a pattern that has continued amid uncertainty.
Latest abortion coverage
Abortion bans and pregnancy surveillance: The body itself as a prison
The Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson was a disaster for abortion and health care in the South. The situation is even more horrific for incarcerated pregnant people subjected to additional reproductive abuse, neglect, and punishment by the state.
Reflections on Reproductive Justice and the Captive Maternal
In response to maternal death, Black women are positioned as heroes saving other women from crisis. In the war on abortion "rights," the state uses their labor, bodies, and caretaking, sustaining the hospital as "another plantation site."
Illustrated: The South isn't so anti-abortion after all. Kentucky proved it at the polls.
Activists across Kentucky organized voters against an amendment that would have prevented a right to abortion or abortion funds in the state constitution. In illustration, meet three folks who were part of the movement to defeat Amendment 2.
Media coverage of abortion is under attack
Scalawag is committed to fighting disinformation alongside trusted news organizations like Prism, DAME Magazine, and Rewire News Group.
Q&A: Southern abortion providers on what the media's getting wrong
A conversation with abortion workers across the South to unpack the performative nature of abortion coverage, share paths toward refocusing the reporting, and explain the intersections between abortion care and abolition work.