The United States Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights for American women.

For the countries that share a border with the United States, what will be the impact for Americans who want to travel to Mexico or Canada to get access to abortions?

First, American women will still need abortions and will seek them out. Abortion is a component of health care for women, along with other reproductive matters.

Second, abortion is a right, even if contested, and should be available without shame or risk.

Third, the ways in which women seek out abortion will be stratified, meaning achieved in different ways and according to a number of factors related to inequality. This will determine who crosses state or international borders to seek out abortions if unavailable in their own states.

This is the immediate and main outcome of the overturning of Roe v. Wade: a situation in which abortion is legal and accessible in some states and illegal and possibly criminalized in others.

Women will still seek abortions
Nonetheless, women will continue to require abortion regardless of what state they live in. Evidence shows that abortion bans don’t stop the procedure, they just alter how people acquire it. They force women to find providers in other jurisdictions, to rely on medical abortion through internet sources — meaning that they’ll purchase online the medication that can induce abortion and administer it themselves — or to seek out clandestine or illegal and unsafe procedures.

It’s worth emphasizing that all sorts of pregnant people need and want abortions: young and old; poor and affluent; Black, Indigenous, racialized, white, people who are cis-gender, transgender or nonbinary; non-religious and religious; pro-choice and pro-life. Gloria Steinem’s research even revealed that pro-life activists who picket outside abortion clinics sometimes get abortions in the same clinics they are protesting.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/roe-v-wade-overturned-will-more-americans-travel-to-canada-and-mexico-for-abortions-185563