Crossing state lines to get an abortion is a new legal minefield, with courts to decide if there’s a right to travel

From The Conversation:

Almost half of the states in the country have made it harder to get an abortion since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the federal right to get an abortion. Fourteen states ban abortions in almost all circumstances, and another eight in almost all cases after 6 to 18 weeks of pregnancy.

Nonetheless, the number of abortions provided in the U.S. has actually grown since the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, rising 11% since 2020, to over 1 million abortions a year.

This increase can partially be explained by the fact that the number of people who crossed state lines to get abortions more than doubled from 81,000 in 2020 to 171,000 in 2023.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the 2022 Dobbs decision that states cannot legally prevent their residents from going to another state to get an abortion, because he believes there is a “constitutional right to interstate travel.”

The U.S. Constitution does not, however, explicitly recognize a “right to interstate travel.” But the Supreme Court has issued decisions as far back as 1867 that can be interpreted to protect this right – and some scholars are confident that such a right exists.

But that hasn’t stopped states such as Idaho and Tennessee from enacting laws that make it harder to travel for an abortion – and some people have even attempted to legally punish their own partners for traveling to end a pregnancy.

As law professors who teach about reproductive justice, we view attempts to restrict abortion travel as one of the frontiers in the anti-abortion rights movement, raising new legal questions for courts to unravel.

Read more here.