Protesters and clinic escorts gathered outside EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville last year before abortion was banned in Kentucky. (Photo by Deborah Yetter)
LaDonna Prince’s new reproductive care clinic in Illinois was supposed to be open more than a year ago.
Prince and her staff were prepared for Indiana to ban abortion, and started trying to move operations to Danville, Illinois, in 2023. It’s about 90 minutes across the border from her old clinic in Indianapolis, which provided abortion care for more than 40 years before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and allowed states to regulate abortion access. Today, 12 states — including Indiana — have a near-total ban on abortion, and four states have a six-week ban, before many people know they are pregnant.
Now that abortion access nationwide may be threatened by the second administration of President-elect Donald Trump and Republican-controlled chambers of Congress, Prince is determined to open the clinic at the beginning of 2025.
“It’s scary, to be honest with you,” Prince said during a press conference in early December. “It’s just really frightening.”
Prince’s clinic, Affirmative Care Solutions, is one of a few independent clinics in the country that will open while many others have closed their doors for various reasons. According to a new report released by the Abortion Care Network, 76 brick-and-mortar independent abortion clinics closed between 2022 and 2024, 11 of those in 2024 alone.
The report also showed that 70% of the closures in that two-year period were in the South or Midwest. Besides those forced out because of a statewide ban, the report said staffing issues and lack of funding have been the driving factors for others to close their doors.
That lack of funding is widespread for abortion care. Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country have reported a downturn in donations and cuts in state funding that have put them in precarious positions. The Abortion Care Network reported in August that their donations decreased by one-third. The Network provides grants for infrastructure projects that help keep clinics afloat, such as building repairs, supplies, equipment and security.
Approximately 58% of all abortions in the United States take place at independent clinics rather than a Planned Parenthood affiliate or a hospital, the report said, and more than 60% of clinics that provide abortions after the first trimester are independent. The only clinics in the country that provide terminations after 26 weeks are independent as well. The vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester, but third trimester care is sometimes necessary.
Kentucky clinic co-owner tries to keep pieces together to quickly open again
While Illinois has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, Prince quickly met resistance from the local government, including the mayor, who cast a tie-breaking vote to pass a city ordinance meant to block the clinic from providing abortion services in Danville. Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. told local news outlet WCIA at the time that the ordinance was in response to the clinic moving in, saying, “This is not any kind of comprehensive health for women. This is literally just an abortion clinic.”
The ordinance is unenforceable because of state law, Prince said, but that hasn’t changed the attitude among local government officials. All of that preceded an attack on the clinic by a 73-year-old man who crashed his truck into the building and tried to set it on fire as it was under renovation in May 2023, causing more than $500,000 in damages and further delaying the clinic’s opening.
Earlier this month, Prince tried to hire a plumber, only to have him tell her he wouldn’t do any work for her because he didn’t believe in abortion.
“It’s not easy to find people who are even willing to do the work, and it’s a business that’s not even open yet,” she said.
The Abortion Care Network provides grant funding for infrastructure needs at independent abortion clinics, and in the report, the organization laments all of the recent clinic closures — because once a clinic closes, it is often exceedingly difficult to reopen, even in a state with laws that allow broad access.
For that reason, at least one independent clinic in a state with a near-total abortion ban is trying to retain its existing infrastructure so that opening would be easier if abortion becomes legal again. Ona Marshall, co-owner of EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville, Kentucky, said the center provided medication and procedural abortion care for 43 years before it was forced to close, and it provided the vast majority of abortions in the state.
Marshall cited a new lawsuit filed in Kentucky in November seeking to overturn the state’s ban, saying that was good news that could ultimately allow the clinic to reopen someday, but those court proceedings can take years. In the meantime, she is trying to keep the pieces of the clinic together to be able to quickly open again if that day comes.
“Once you give up a license in a hostile state, depending on whether there’s an anti-abortion governor, they may deny you a license for no valid reason, which requires months of additional court challenges with no guarantee of winning,” Marshall said during the press conference. “You are taking a large personal and financial risk in a highly unstable and politically charged environment, so it’s just critical to try to keep as many clinics open as possible.”
Tabitha Crowe’s first child was due in February 2025, but she had a miscarriage in August. (Courtesy of Tabitha Crowe)
Editor’s Note: This is the sixth installment of an occasional States Newsroom series called When and Where: Abortion Access in America, profiling individuals who have needed abortion care in the U.S. before and after Dobbs. The first installment can be found here, the second installment is here, the third is here, the fourth is here, and the fifth is here.
By Sofia Resnick
Tabitha Crowe said she woke up around 4 a.m. one Thursday in August covered in blood. She was visiting her parents in southern Louisiana when she started miscarrying her first pregnancy. She said her mom and dad drove her to a nearby hospital while she fought dizziness from the blood loss in their back seat.
“I didn’t even know I could bleed that much,” Crowe told States Newsroom.
Over the course of the next few days, Crowe said she passed baseball-sized blood clots and experienced extreme pain and dizziness in two different hospitals, while never being offered a common miscarriage procedure, even after she requested it.
An estimated 10 to 20% of known pregnancies in the U.S. end in miscarriage. In about 80% of miscarriages, women are able to expel the pregnancy tissue naturally over a period of one to eight weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. When intervention is necessary in the first trimester, ACOG recommends abortion medications or procedures such as vacuum aspiration or dilation and curettage (D&C). Later in pregnancy, recommended termination procedures include dilation and evacuation (D&E), which has a high safety record but is condemned by anti-abortion groups and banned in some states.
But increasingly, women say they are being denied routine miscarriage care in states like Louisiana, where doctors face imprisonment if they perform an abortion unless a woman is at risk of dying, and where common miscarriage drugs are now more difficult to access. Doctors in Louisiana and Texas have also reported a rise in patients whose pregnancies are no longer viable receiving more risky and invasive terminations, such as Cesarean sections and inductions, in lieu of abortion procedures. It’s a change in practice some doctors involved in the anti-abortion movement endorse.
And in cases like Crowe’s — where death might not be imminent but failing to intervene could increase the risk for infection or other issues — some doctors are telling patients to finish their miscarriages at home.
“I think they were waiting for me to get in bad enough health,” said Crowe, who attributes her experience to Louisiana’s abortion ban, though she said no medical staff mentioned the law or responded to her requests for a D&C.
But waiting for patients’ conditions to worsen can sometimes be fatal, according to an ongoing investigation by ProPublica, which has reported on five deaths linked to abortion bans, most recently a young mom in Texas who spent hours in the ER but was never offered a D&C that could have saved her life.
As stories emerge linking abortion bans to adverse health effects, some state health departments are working to make these stories harder to learn about.
In Georgia, officials recently dismissed all 32 members of the state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee following ProPublica’s reporting that the committee linked two women’s deaths to Georgia’s six-week abortion ban. The state said it would reset the committee through a new application process and is considering measures to ensure patient confidentiality.
In Texas, ProPublica reported that at least three women have died because of delays in care caused by the state’s abortion bans. Despite these reported deaths, Texas’ Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee said it wouldn’t examine any pregnancy-related deaths from 2022 and 2023, the first two years after the state’s near-total abortion ban took effect, according to the Washington Post.
Idaho, shortly after banning abortion, disbanded its Maternal Mortality Review Committee in 2023 after members recommended expanding Medicaid. The recently re-established committee is now backlogged and focused on publishing 2023 data in January before tackling 2022 data. The committee’s last report, based on 2021 data, showed the state’s maternal mortality rate had doubled in recent years and most of the deaths were preventable.
Crowe said her experience has moved her to speak out for better reproductive health care.
“You go to a hospital, you expect care, you expect some type of answers on what’s going on,” said Tabitha Crowe, who said she was not offered a common miscarriage treatment at two Louisiana hospitals in August. “I didn’t get that.” (Courtesy of Tabitha Crowe)
“For me to have a miscarriage for the first time, it’s already a very scary process,” said Crowe, who said she eventually got the care she needed outside of Louisiana. “You go to a hospital, you expect care, you expect some type of answers on what’s going on. And I didn’t get that.”
‘I had a sense it was because of the abortion laws’
Crowe and her husband, Noah Holesha, live on the Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle. Crowe said her husband is in the Army and she was medically discharged from the military in 2023 and now works as a caretaker. The two married in 2022 and were expecting their first baby in February.
But on the way to LSU Health Lallie Kemp Medical Center in Independence, Louisiana, on Aug. 8, Crowe said she felt she would never get to meet this baby. Two weeks earlier, her 10-week-old fetus only measured 6 weeks. Now in the emergency room, Crowe said medical staff gave her pain medicine, cleared her blood clots, and discharged her to finish miscarrying naturally.
Two days later at her parents’ house, Crowe said she woke up with 10 out of 10 pain.
“I was in excruciating pain again, like screaming and crying pain,” she said.
She said her parents took her back to Lallie Kemp, where they transferred her to St. Tammany Parish Hospital Emergency Department in Covington, about a 45-minute drive, because it was the nearest hospital with a dedicated OB-GYN unit.
“Lallie Kemp Medical Center complies with federal patient privacy laws and therefore cannot discuss specific patients’ care,” Dr. Matloob Rehman, the hospital’s medical director, said in an email. “Lallie Kemp is a small, rural hospital without a full complement of specialists, including obstetrical surgery. If a patient is in need of such care, it is Lallie Kemp’s practice to refer or transfer the patient to a hospital that can provide such services.”
At St. Tammany, Crowe said she spent the day receiving pain medicine and transvaginal ultrasounds and having her vaginal canal cleared of clots. Medical records Crowe shared with States Newsroom indicate she was given misoprostol to evacuate her uterus, which Crowe said she was not aware of. She said the ultrasounds were still showing she had not completed the miscarriage. Crowe’s cousin had recently miscarried, so she and her family knew to ask for a D&C.
“They did ultrasounds and all that, but they didn’t help make sure that the miscarriage was completing,” Crowe said. “We kept telling them, ‘Hey, can y’all just do this D&C, so like we can be done with this pain?’ They wouldn’t answer.”
Crowe’s sister, a nurse in Texas, where abortion is also banned, suggested in a text that maybe it was because of Louisiana’s abortion ban that she wasn’t being offered a D&C.
“I had a sense it was because of the abortion laws, because by the time they did the canal sweep of blood clots, they didn’t even want to listen that I was in pain anymore. They were like, brushing it off, like, you’ll be fine,” Crowe said. “Even if them not doing it was wasn’t because of the abortion laws, I still didn’t get the treatment that I needed.”
Crowe said she was still dizzy and in pain when St. Tammany released her late on Aug. 10. Her St. Tammany hospital medical records say her miscarriage was completed at St. Tammany, which Crowe disputes. Medical records from the hospital in Florida, where she received the D&C, say the patient had an “incomplete miscarriage with evidence of retained POC [products of conception] on TVUS [transvaginal ultrasound], continued bleeding and anemia.”
The St. Tammany Health System Communications Department declined to comment on Crowe’s account, citing patient confidentiality, and said in a statement: “At St. Tammany Health System, we place our patients and their families’ wellbeing first. Patient privacy rights are established by the Federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In compliance with this act, we are not at liberty to provide information or comment.”
Crowe decided to drive the four hours back to Florida. She said her pain had ebbed, but soon after she got home, her husband rushed her to Eglin Air Force Base emergency department, where she said she received a D&C the following day.
The Eglin hospital did not respond to requests for comment.
Crowe said she was still dizzy in the weeks following, and she was confused and angry, believing — without confirmation — that she was denied health care she needed because of a new abortion law. She said she started reaching out to malpractice attorneys, reproductive rights groups, even President-elect Donald Trump.
“I sent everybody emails.” Crowe said. “I reached out to Congress. I reached out to the office of Trump. I reached out to lawyers. It wasn’t anger that I’ve lost the child — because I had a feeling I was going to lose the child — but it was the anger of they didn’t give their 100% care. I was getting in bad shape, health-wise, because of it.”
Louisiana abortion laws affect miscarriage care
Louisiana was one of the first states to ban abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. And it’s the first, followed by Texas, to reclassify two abortion and miscarriage medications — mifepristone and misoprostol — as controlled substances, even though they haven’t been shown to cause addiction or dependence. In late October, health care workers sued the state, arguing that the new law is unconstitutional and has added barriers to emergency care.
One of the legal advocacy groups representing plaintiffs in that case, Lift Louisiana, co-published a report with Physicians for Human Rights with detailed interviews from patients, doctors and clinicians of how the state’s abortion ban has changed reproductive health care in Louisiana. The report found that some OB-GYN practices are now deferring prenatal care until beyond the first trimester, when miscarriage care is more common. Some clinicians reported an increase in patient referrals from rural hospitals for routine care.
“To avoid the risk of criminal penalties under the bans, nearly every clinician relayed an account
in which they and/or their colleagues delayed abortion care until complications worsened to
the point where the patient’s life was irrefutably at risk,” the report reads.
Though she personally disagrees with abortion after the first trimester, Crowe said she now believes in abortion rights.
“Growing up, I was always pro-life, because I always wanted to have a kid and all that,” Crowe said. “I was also the type that’s like, I’m not going to judge you if you do. Now I’m like … the choice to have an abortion is important because some women … we need this procedure done to save our lives, too. My child was already lost; it lost its life. Because of the abortion laws, you’re keeping me from having my life. … I couldn’t grieve because I was in so much pain.”
People attend a "Fight4Her" pro-choice rally in front of the White House at Lafayette Square on March 29, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)
We knew what would happen when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
We knew women would be denied access to abortion in many states, including here in Wisconsin. We knew patients would be forced to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get care. We knew there would be people who would be forced to stay pregnant against their will. We knew doctors would be put in impossible positions, knowing they had the skill and knowledge to help their patients but fearing incarceration and the loss of their careers due to state laws.
In Wisconsin, abortion was suspended immediately after Roe was overturned due to an 1849 law that prosecutors threatened to use to ban abortion in the state. This forced 9 in 10 people to travel out of state for care, putting people’s health and lives at risk. Fortunately, 15 months later, after thousands of Wisconsin women were denied care, a Dane County judge ruled that Wisconsin’s pre-Roe statute does not ban abortion. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has resumed providing abortion care, but women’s health has suffered, confusion remains, and the threats to reproductive care and freedom continue in the Legislature, Congress and the courts.
Today, 21 states have banned abortion, and 29 million women and people across the gender spectrum who are of reproductive age are living under those bans. That number includes 44% of all women of reproductive age, and 55% of Black women.
And we knew women would die because of these bans. We didn’t know how many, or where, or who they would be. But now we have names. Two women — both Black women, both mothers — in Georgia died in 2022, in the first months without a federal constitutional right to abortion. According to Georgia’s Department of Public Health maternal mortality review committee, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller died preventable deaths, as a direct result of Georgia’s abortion ban.
Women and families have been telling their stories everywhere anyone will pay attention — on social media, on national television, in local newspapers. They are telling the world that abortion is essential health care, that women, trans and nonbinary people are suffering under these bans. They’re reminding us that access to sexual and reproductive health care is not a luxury to be awarded to the few: it is essential if we call ourselves a free country.
The stories are piling up, some of them heartbreaking, some of them enraging, some of them achingly familiar to our own experiences or those of people we love. After all, one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime, which means weallknow someone who has had an abortion, whether they’ve shared that story or not.
And we know what will happen if politicians against reproductive freedom take power this election. We know because they’ve already shown us what they will do, and they continue to pursue additional restrictions on our freedom to access needed information and health care.
Our democracy and basic human rights are on the ballot in November. What we can do is vote.
We can elect leaders who will protect our right to make our own decisions about our bodies. Because there is no politician, of any party, who is more qualified, at any point in pregnancy, to make decisions about your pregnancy than you and your doctor.
And people know this. Nearly 80% of Americans believe the decision whether to have an abortion should be left to a woman and her doctor, rather than regulated by law.
Every ballot cast in every election is a nudge toward a different future. Those nudges, taken together, determine the path our country will follow. The moral arc of the universe only bends toward justice and freedom if we all pull together.
So fight for the future you want, the future we all deserve. Vote for freedom.
Vice President Kamala Harris took part in an interview with the “Call Her Daddy” podcast that was released Sunday. In this photo, the “Call Her Daddy” host, creator and executive producer, Alex Cooper, participates in The Art of The Interview session at Spotify Beach on June 20, 2023 in Cannes, France. (Antony Jones | Getty Images, for Spotify)
WASHINGTON — In an interview released Sunday on a widely heard podcast geared toward young women, Vice President Kamala Harris stressed the importance of reproductive rights, a central topic in her bid for the White House.
The “Call Her Daddy” host, Alex Cooper, specifically centered the 40-minute interview around issues affecting women such as domestic violence and access to abortion.
Meanwhile, the GOP nominee, former President Donald Trump, joined the Hugh Hewitt radio show Monday, a conservative talk show that has about 7.5 million weekly listeners.
The interview with Trump was mostly about the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. In the attack, 1,200 people — including 46 U.S. citizens — were killed in Israel and hundreds were taken hostage.
On “Call Her Daddy,” Cooper noted before the interview that she does not have politicians on her show because it is not focused on politics, but “at the end of the day, I couldn’t see a world in which one of the main conversations in this election is women, and I’m not a part of it.”
“The conversation I know I am qualified to have is the one surrounding women’s bodies and how we are treated and valued in this country,” Cooper said.
She added that her team reached out to Trump and invited him on the show. “If he also wants to have a meaningful, in-depth conversation about women’s rights in this country, then he is welcome on ‘Call Her Daddy’ any time,” she said.
The podcast is the second-most listened-to on Spotify, with an average of 5 million weekly listeners. The demographics are about 90% women, with a large chunk of them Gen Z and Millennials — an important voting bloc for Harris to reach with less than a month until the election concludes Nov. 5.
The podcast is part of Harris’ media marathon this week. Late Monday, she appeared on “60 Minutes” for an interview. On Tuesday she is scheduled to be in New York to appear on the daytime show “The View,” “The Howard Stern Show” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Victims of sexual assault
Harris on the podcast touched on several stories she tells on the campaign trail, such as how a high school friend ended up staying with her and her family because the friend was being sexually assaulted at home.
“I decided at a young age I wanted to do the work of protecting vulnerable people,” Harris said.
She added that it’s important to destigmatize survivors of sexual assault.
“The more that we let anything exist in the shadows, the more likely it is that people are suffering and suffering silently,” Harris said. “The more we talk about it, the more we will address it and deal with it, the more we will be equipped to deal with it, be it in terms of schools, in terms of the society at large, right, and to not stigmatize it.”
Cooper asked Harris how the U.S. can be safer for women.
Harris talked about domestic violence and the bind that women can be in if they have children and are financially reliant on an abuser.
“Most women will endure whatever personal, physical pain they must in order to make sure their kids have a roof over their head or food,” she said. “One of the ways that we know we can uplift the ability of women to have choices is uplift the ability of women to have economic health and well-being.”
Cooper asked Harris about the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago and the recent story of Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who died after not being able to receive an abortion following complications from taking an abortion pill.
Harris said states that pass abortion bans will argue there are exceptions “if the life of the mother is at risk,” but that it’s not a realistic policy in practice.
“You know what that means in practical terms, she’s almost dead before you decide to give her care. So we’re going to have public health policy that says a doctor, a medical professional, waits until you’re at death’s door before they give you care,” Harris said. “Where is the humanity?”
Trump criticizes protesters
Besides the appearance with Hugh Hewitt, Trump is also scheduled late Monday to speak with Jewish leaders in Miami.
During the interview with Hewitt, Trump slammed the pro-Palestinian protests across college campuses and argued that those institutions should do more to quell the student protests.
“You have other Jewish students that are afraid,” Trump said. “Yeah, that’s true, and they should be afraid. I never thought I would see this in my life with the campus riots and what they’re saying and what they’re doing. And they have to put them down quickly.”
Hewitt asked Trump, because of his background as a real estate developer, if he could turn Gaza, which has been devastated by the war, into something like Monaco. The Principality of Monaco is an independent, affluent microstate along the coast of France that attracts wealthy tourists.
“It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything,” Trump said, noting the Mediterranean Sea bordering the Gaza Strip. “You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place — the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate.”
Hewitt asked Trump about Harris’ housing policy that, if approved by Congress, would give first-time homebuyers up to $25,000 for a down payment. Both candidates have made housing a top issue.
Trump said he opposed the plan and instead advocated for the private sector to handle housing. He then veered off topic into immigration and without evidence accused migrants at the southern border of being murderers.
“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” he said. “You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”
Trump has often invoked white supremacist language when talking about immigrants, accusing them of “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. He’s also made a core campaign promise of enacting mass deportations of millions of immigrants in the country who are in the country without authorization.
Hurricane interrupts campaign
Some campaign events have been postponed due to Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm barreling toward Florida. It comes after the devastating Hurricane Helene that caused severe damage in western North Carolina and other states in the Southeast.
A Tuesday roundtable with Trump and Latino leaders was postponed, as well as a town hall in Miami, Florida with Univison for undecided Hispanic voters. The Univision town hall with Harris is scheduled for Thursday in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, on Tuesday is scheduled to give remarks in Detroit, Michigan.
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is heading to Reno, Nevada, Tuesday for a campaign reception.
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