For years, anti-abortion legislators have shut down women’s health clinics through targeted regulations of abortion providers, known as TRAP laws. As a result—even before a pandemic hit the nation—many women have been forced to travel long distances to get to abortion clinics.
Now, the COVID-19 outbreak, and the need for social distancing, has made this travel more dangerous than ever.
To make matters worse, hostile state governors and attorneys general are using the crisis to try to close down the remaining clinics for the duration of the pandemic by declaring abortion a non-essential medical service—forcing women to travel even farther, sometimes across state lines, to access abortion health care.
But abortion advocates are fighting back by calling for greater access to the abortion pill as an important way to provide safe, accessible, socially…