Louisiana’s three remaining abortion clinics are preparing to move out of the state following a protracted legal battle over the state’s anti-abortion laws and myriad restrictions on abortion care.
Their closure – along with the closure of Mississippi’s sole remaining clinic – will leave the neighboring states without any abortion clinic for the first time in nearly 50 years.
An ongoing legal challenge to block the state’s anti-abortion laws has frozen legal abortion access several times in the weeks after the US Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck down precedent in Roe v Wade and revoked the constitutional right to abortion care.
Women’s Health Care Center in New Orleans and Delta Clinic of Baton Rouge, which operate under the same ownership, also are relocating, a spokesperson confirmed to The Independent.
“Following the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs and the enforcement of Louisiana abortion bans, abortion is no longer legal in Louisiana except in rare cases. Due to these circumstances, it is our intention to relocate and are in the process of finalizing agreements in two other states that respect and value women’s bodily autonomy, so that we can again provide respectful, non-judgmental, quality abortion care services,”
Supporters for June Medical Services, which operates Hope Medical Group in Shreveport, a clinic that was at the centre of a critical case in front of the Supreme Court in 2020, are collecting donations for the clinic’s move “to another state to continue providing safe, legal abortion care to people in need.”
The clinic opened in 1980.
On 12 August, the Louisiana Supreme Court rejected an appeal from plaintiffs to block the state’s anti-abortion “trigger” laws a third time, striking a critical blow to abortion rights advocates and patients in the state.
The state’s three overlapping abortion bans outlaw nearly all abortions. The state probihts providers from performing abortions provided that the physician makes “reasonable medical efforts” to save the life of the patient and the foetus. In 2022, Louisiana’s Democratic anti-abortion governor also signed a bill that effectively outlaws all abortions beyond the moment of “fertilization and implantation.”
It makes no exception for pregnancies from rape or incest.
Providers could face up to 10 years in prison or a $100,000 fine.
A statement from Jenny Ma, senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is battling the state’s anti-abortion laws, said in a statement earlier this month that the “legal ping pong is causing chaos for doctors trying to provide care” across the state.
“It’s inhumane to have patients living in fear of whether or not they will be able to access reproductive healthcare,” she said.
Louisiana is among at least 10 states – including Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin – that have outlawed abortion entirely in nearly all instances.
As many as 26 states could outlaw abortion without constitutional protections affirmed by Roe. States legislatures are expected to consider more-restrictive anti-abortion legislation in the coming weeks and months. Earlier this month, Indiana was the first state to adopt a new anti-abortion law after Roe’s collapse.
