3 Years in, Horrors Wrought by Anti-Abortion “Dobbs” Ruling Are Apparent to All

It’s been three years since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an odious Supreme Court ruling that has unleashed a veritable crisis of rights, health, and safety for people who can become pregnant.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and sent abortion’s legality back to the states, abortion bans have spread widely across much of the U.S. As of June 2025, 16 states have enacted a total or near-total abortion ban, rendering the entire Southeast a legal abortion desert. Other states, like North Carolina, Nebraska, and Utah, have banned abortion at 12 or 18 weeks, which would have been unconstitutional under Roe just a few short years ago. In 2023 alone, the first full year after Dobbs, 171,000 people were forced to travel out of state to access abortion care in the U.S.

Traveling, especially out of state, isn’t just a logistical burden; it also means added cost. Plane tickets, lodging, gas money, child care, food — so much is needed to make abortion accessible when someone is forced to travel for care. The Brigid Alliance, which provides financial and logistical assistance to people forced to travel for abortion care, estimates that the average cost per abortion travel itinerary now exceeds $2,300, despite the fact that a first trimester procedure costs only a quarter of that.

Dobbs doesn’t just hurt people seeking abortion care. If a pregnant person in a state with an abortion ban has a different outcome other than a live birth, including a miscarriage or stillbirth, they can face serious prison time. People like Serena Maria Chandler-Scott of Georgia, who miscarried at 19 weeks, and Brittany Watts of Ohio, who miscarried at 22 weeks, have been charged under their respective states’ restrictive anti-abortion laws. And the net of criminalization also extends beyond pregnant people to providers and doctors, creating a network of fear for pregnant people, their families, and the health care providers they entrust to care for them.

That’s bad enough and a crisis in its own right. But the ramifications of Dobbs are far broader than hindering abortion access.

Dobbs is, quite literally, killing people.

Doctors are afraid to provide basic care to pregnant folks in states where abortion bans are in effect, unsure if they will be charged with murder.

At least two Black women in Georgia, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, died because of the ramifications of Dobbs. Georgia has a strict, six-week abortion ban. Thurman died after being denied basic care because she was pregnant and past the six-week point in her pregnancy in 2022: she had an infection related to fetal tissue that hadn’t been fully expelled from her body, but the hospital delayed performing a routine dilation and curettage due to Georgia’s restrictive laws. Miller, afraid of possible prosecution, refused to go to the hospital after complications from a self-managed abortion in the fall of 2022. Thurman and Miller were, essentially, killed by the state instead of receiving the basic, life-saving care to which they were constitutionally entitled just a few months before.

And then there’s the abhorrent case of Adriana Smith, a Black woman diagnosed with brain death who has been forcibly kept alive by the State of Georgia — against her family’s wishes — because she was nine weeks pregnant. She was taken off life support on June 17 this year after her fetus was delivered via C-section. That the state can force a Black woman’s body to be used as a literal incubator is a direct result of the Dobbs decision.

Because of Dobbs, to be pregnant in a state with an abortion ban, even if it isn’t an outright total abortion ban, is to risk your life.

But Dobbs has also wrought a different shift, one unexpected to just about everyone: It made abortion rights politically popular.

Abortion has won in nearly every election in which it’s been on the ballot since the Dobbs decision came down in June 2022, including conservative states like Ohio, Montana, and Kansas. Even when the ballot initiative failed, like in Florida, it was only because the state required a 60 percent threshold. (The initiative was approved by 57 percent of voters.) Support for abortion rights is a winning issue, and it is currently more politically popular than it has been since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.

Unfortunately, that popularity doesn’t automatically translate into legality, and legality doesn’t translate into access. For example, in November 2023, Missouri voted to enshrine the right to reproductive freedom into the state constitution, which should override the state’s total abortion ban and make abortion legal to Missourians once again. However, the Missouri Supreme Court has, so far, refused to allow the change to take effect. Before Dobbs, Missouri only had a single clinic left, and it’s been shuttered for three years. If the state ever does allow abortion to become legal, reopening a clinic will require a significant expense and effort.

One of the most important lessons that the tragedy of Dobbs can teach us is that a right is hard to retrieve once it’s lost. It’s not impossible, and we cannot afford to stop this fight because it isn’t just about abortion. Trans rights, immigrant justice, freedom for Palestinians — all of these are about our most sacred and fundamental rights.

Bodily autonomy isn’t an empty catch phrase; it’s a worldview, one predicated on everyone’s shared humanity. Dobbs, like many egregious Supreme Court rulings that came before it, is a great injustice, done by the state to the people. To undo that injustice, we cannot simply wait for the state to change hands. Instead, we must do it ourselves.