by Laurie Sobel , Amrutha Ramaswamy, Brittni Frederiksen, and Alina Salganicoff

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted several states to place restrictions that have effectively banned or blocked the availability of abortion services. While every state has taken action to declare a public health emergency to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, several states have made public health emergency declarations to specifically define abortion as non-essential or elective health procedures and banned abortions until the end of the emergency. States have justified these orders to conserve personal protective equipment (PPE). However, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and other leading medical professional organizations issued a statement defining abortion as a time sensitive and “essential component of comprehensive health care” and that delay, even days, “may increase the risks or potentially make it completely inaccessible.” The World Health Organization also classifies abortion “essential” to women’s rights and health.

Recent news reports have begun to document the challenges that women living in these states have faced in attempting to obtain abortions during the COVID-19 outbreak. While it is too soon to know the impact of these abortion bans on women, providers have expressed concern that women will delay their abortions, or need to travel long distances, with overnight stays, and sometimes without any support and at high cost. Some worry that women will try to self-manage abortions in ways that are not safe, putting their own health at risk. Abortion providers that are forced to close their services to patients may not be able to reopen after the emergency bans are lifted as was the case after many clinics in Texas closed after a restrictive set of laws were enacted. Although the laws were successfully challenged at the Supreme Court in Whole Women’s Health v Hellerstedt, many of the clinics were unable to reopen after the law was overturned.