Inside Planned Parenthood’s Birmingham, Alabama, clinic, a quiet space with few windows and stock photos of the city lining the walls, a woman taps her hand against her stomach as Dr Shelly Tien performs a surgical abortion.
Tien flew to Birmingham the day before, and she will return home to Jacksonville, Florida, that night. A week earlier, she performed abortions at a clinic in Oklahoma. She’s among an estimated 50 doctors who travel across state lines, according to the National Abortion Federation, to provide abortions in places with limited abortion access.
