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Florida's near-total abortion ban took effect this week, marking a brutal milestone for abortion rights activists nationally: From South Carolina to Texas, the South is now a virtual abortion care desert—a once unthinkable reality that could sway votes this November.
Lone outlier North Carolina has a 12-week ban that could potentially offer a glint of hope for pregnant patients in the Southeast. As Politico reported, that means a Miami resident seeking abortion care past six weeks of pregnancy would need to drive 11 hours north to North Carolina. But if they couldn't withstand the state's 72-hour waiting period, they would need to venture another four hours north to Virginia, where abortion care is still legal up to the point of viability, or roughly 24 weeks of pregnancy.
But for most patients in the South, and certainly the neediest among them, the reality is that reaching any place that could offer abortion care in a timely fashion is now out of reach.
“Our patients are screwed,” Robin Marty, executive director of the West Alabama Women’s Center, told Politico. The abortion clinic became a reproductive health center following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
“This is the point where it all starts to crumble,” Marty warned.
The Biden campaign marked the South's devastating new reality by sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Jacksonville to rail against "another Trump abortion ban" going into effect.
But one has to wonder if a near-total ban on abortion in an entire region of the country could impact American women’s psyches—and their votes—far more than most political analysts believe.
Polling certainly suggests that it could.
