PHILADELPHIA — Thousands of people from neighboring states may come to Pennsylvania to terminate their pregnancies if a forthcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision ends a national right to an abortion.
Pennsylvania abortion providers have spent months preparing for a surge of up to 8,500 more out-of-state patients from places that could lose abortion access — hiring more staff, creating patient navigator programs, and pushing fund-raising efforts into overdrive.
Any week now, the court is expected to release a decision that could overturn the landmark abortion rights cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey that have guaranteed the right to abortion access for nearly 50 years. In a leaked draft of the majority opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.”
