As she walks in the door on a recent afternoon to relieve her parents of caring for her five-month-old daughter, Jasmine feels a familiar pang of guilt.
Jasmine*, 28, is a single mother raising four kids in a small town in far eastern Washington, near the border of Idaho. Her partner of more than a decade – and father of her children – is incarcerated for an assault charge that she brought against him.
Without her parents stepping in to help, she’d struggle to hold down her job at a factory. But she knows it’s hard on them.
Most nights, her dad, Andrew, 52, finishes his swing shift as a janitor at the hospital around 1am, sleeps a few hours, and then rises again at 4am so he and his wife can watch their grandchild all day. Many weeks he gets by on 11 hours of sleep – total.
Her mother tries to reassure her. “You know I’m gonna take care of my kids,” says Kelli, 52, as she bustles around collecting her things to leave after watching the baby for nine hours.
Jasmine fantasizes aloud about what she would buy her parents if she had the money. “I’m thinking, like, a really nice recliner,” she says to them. Her dad smiles. “Then grandpa would never get up,” he teases.
Despite the sacrifice the situation demands of her family and how deeply tired and often lonely Jasmine is at the end of the day, she sees this last baby as a positive force that helped her stop using drugs and focus on her priorities.
But had abortion seemed a more accessible and supported choice in this small American town during a few critical days early in her pregnancy, her life might have taken a different course.
For women like Jasmine across the country who are making this same choice in a quickly shifting cultural and legal landscape, the decision can be complicated by factors beyond simply what the laws permit.
‘We’re having a baby’
Jasmine found out she was pregnant in the summer of 2022, just weeks after the supreme court overturned the federal right to an abortion.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Weeks before, she’d been assaulted by her partner. They have both struggled with substance abuse. That weekend, they were on an especially bad meth bender. He became violent – according to a police incident report, he threw Jasmine on the floor and strangled her to the point of almost losing consciousness while saying he was “going to kill her”.
The children were feet away, in the hallway. From the bedroom, she could hear them crying. This is what other parents do to their kids, she thought. Not me.
Jasmine fled with her children to her parents’ place. Her call to the police set the legal system in motion: a no contact order, charges of assault, stalking. It had been 11 years of this kind of abuse. Jasmine was done.
Then came the pregnancy test. She took it standing in the bathroom with her best friend, who looked first. “We’re having a baby,” she said to Jasmine. “No, we’re fucking not. No. We’re not,” Jasmine replied.
She doesn’t have much time for politics, but Jasmine believes there’s a place for abortion. Had she been aware of a clinic close by where she could have accessed services in that first 24 hours, she says, she would have done it without question.
Choices about abortion in the region can be influenced by practical constraints where urban centers straddle state borders. The small town of Clarkston where Jasmine lives is located in Washington, where abortion is legal. The state has taken an offensive stance to protect reproductive choice, passing a law that shields patients and providers from legal prosecution and makes Washington a safe harbor for abortion seekers. By some measures this effort has been successful; in the year since Dobbs, Planned Parenthood in Washington state has seen a 56% increase in abortion patients from Idaho.
Despite being a Washington resident, Jasmine’s closest healthcare facilities are a 10-minute drive over the Snake River in Lewiston, Idaho. On that side of the border, women live under some of the most austere anti-abortion laws in the country – laws with tentacles that reach into Washington, despite its protections. A trigger law made the procedure illegal after the Dobbs decision in 2022 and the state’s “abortion trafficking law” – currently on hold as its legality is challenged – would make it a felony to transport minors out of state for an abortion. Debate around the law has left many people confused about what is legal, and intimidated by the severity of potential punishments. Many are afraid to leave the state for an abortion under any conditions.
This confusion of geography, laws and messaging means that for women like Jasmine in this region, the decision whether or not to have an abortion comes down to a confluence of factors including readily available resources, pressure and influence from family and friends, and information that may or may not be accurate.
Jasmine is clear about the fact that had she been determined enough, she could have had an abortion. She doesn’t see the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe as having much influence on her life.
But what she does acknowledge is that accessing abortion involved many difficult steps.
Jasmine figured that her best bet for getting care would be in Spokane, Washington. She knew of a Planned Parenthood clinic there, but it was a two-hour drive and in addition to the gas money and childcare that trip would demand, the procedure, she thought, would not be free. “I was like, you know, how am I going to come up with the money?” Skipping a car payment was a potential solution.
In fact, the closest Planned Parenthood clinic to Clarkston was not hours away in Spokane but just a 30-minute drive away in Pullman, Washington. The possibility that a closer facility exists might not occur to someone managing the daily chaos of a job, three kids and a domestic violence charge.
In addition to the travel and the expense, she grappled with the procedure itself. It would be emotional. She had a painful miscarriage in the second trimester of a pregnancy years before, and the loss still haunted her. The abortion pill could induce painful cramping and bleeding. She imagined enduring that at home while also caring for her kids, not telling anyone else.
“I didn’t know what was more scary, the situation I was in or – you know, having to fork out the money and then do it by myself,” she says.
Sarah DeVleming is the health center manager at the Pullman clinic. Lately, she says, people are coming in scared and intimidated.
The experience of getting an abortion, she says, is often an emotional one. Now people are dealing with the extra stress of navigating conflicting laws, particularly if they’re coming from across the border in Idaho. “No one should have to worry about getting in trouble with the law on top of that,” DeVleming says.
In response to their sense that patients aren’t equipped with accurate information, the team at the clinic has launched a billboard campaign in Idaho, letting women know they can cross the border for care. “Extreme politicians in Idaho don’t want you to know this,” reads one sign. “Abortion is legal in Oregon and Washington.”
Jasmine did not see any of these billboards the day she found out she was pregnant. Instead, she turned to the place she knew would be free and convenient: Reliance Center in Lewiston, Idaho. The clinic doesn’t advertise as a crisis pregnancy center – the website uses the words “free sexual health clinic” – but it is affiliated with a ministry by the same name.
The Reliance waiting room features a soft couch and signs on the wall with affirming messages like “love lives here”, and “be still”. Free beverages and snacks sit out against a wall. Signs advertise parenting classes. The promise of free ultrasounds often brings people in the door.
Crisis pregnancy centers – facilities in which non-medical staff, often using religious messaging, try to dissuade people from having abortions – have been the subject of much criticism in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Reliance Center blurs this distinction by employing some medical staff, but with an anti-abortion approach. The founder, Heather Lawless, says while they don’t offer abortion and birth control, their mission is not to talk people out of these things. “We only speak medical truth,” she says.
They also don’t encourage these choices. Part of this truth includes describing to women possible dangers of abortion. “Is there a danger of perforating the uterus?” she says. “Of course there is.” (The risk of uterine perforation during abortion is considered low. At least one study puts it at less than 1%.)
Often women come to her center emotional and irrational, their lives in chaos on top of grappling with an unplanned pregnancy. “It feels very important when you’re sitting down with a woman having that conversation,” says Jaclyn Zipse, who works there and remembers talking to Jasmine the day she came in. “The choice is going to be lifelong.”
Since the Dobbs decision, the center has seen a 65% increase in patients it calls “abortion minded”. After Jasmine visited Reliance, the staff sent her home with a box of baby items including a onesie that said “best gift ever”, and a sign that read “brave mama”. Looking at that onesie, she started crying. “I just needed someone to tell me I could do it,” she says.
A new plan emerged. She would stop using drugs. She would have this baby.
Shortly after that, though her partner was still under a no contact order and legally forbidden to talk with her, the couple reconciled. Had she not been pregnant, she doesn’t imagine it would have happened. Finding out about the baby reminded her of good times. “Anytime I’m pregnant, he’s his best self,” she says. “We just started treating each other the way we should.”
‘This won’t last forever’
Standing in her kitchen, Jasmine makes sandwiches for the trip to the prison. It’s a two-hour drive. Due to the protective order, she’s not allowed in to see her children’s father, but the kids can go into the visiting room with a friend of hers. It’s their second trip and his second time meeting his youngest child.
Taped to her cupboard is a flyer that reads “Ten tips for stressless parenting”, alongside another that says “Ten ways to help your child with homework”. The phone rings. A recording informs her that it’s a free call from an individual at the correction center. “This call is not private,” says the recording. “It will be recorded and may be monitored.”
“Do you want to say hi to your daddy?” she asks the baby. They’re leaving in an hour. “I am going to stand by that gate, so hopefully you can look out the window and see me,” she tells him. “All right, I love you.”
“I love you,” he replies.
Things will be different when he gets out of jail, thinks Jasmine. This time-out was the break they needed. They’ll both stay sober. He’s a good person, she repeats. A good dad who deserves a second chance.
Still, the doubt creeps in. There’s a familiar tone in his voice sometimes on the phone that scares her.
If things go bad, she has a contingency plan: always keep $500 hidden away. Never be without a vehicle.
On her mirror, she’s written a nightly checklist to make the morning routine easier the next day: “Set clothes out for everyone; tidy up house,” she instructs herself.
The last one: “Remember this won’t last forever.”
*Jasmine’s last name was withjeld from this story at her request.
• In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org. Use the following endnote if a story is about a murder/suicide: In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 988 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org
