A group of Democratic senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday asking the Justice Department to protect patients’ abilities to travel out-of-state for abortion ― a right that’s increasingly under attack.
The letter follows Idaho passing a far-reaching law in April prohibiting anyone from helping a minor get an abortion in another state without parental consent, with the crime punishable by two to five years in prison. Its passage came despite U.S. Supreme Court justices explicitly saying when they overturned Roe v. Wade that such a law would be unconstitutional.
Lawmakers in Iowa, Texas and Tennessee have also proposed legislation to crack down on abortion travel ― though none have passed it yet ― leading to concern that Idaho’s aggressive position will bleed into other states, the senators wrote.
“Given the work of many of our states to protect access to abortion care no matter whether a patient comes from the state or travels from another, we are alarmed by efforts in other states to curb interstate travel, which may present an unprecedented attack on Americans’ rights,” the senators wrote.
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The letter’s signatories include Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Peter Welch (Vt.), Raphael Warnock (Ga.), Alex Padilla (Calif.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and John Fetterman (Pa.)
The senators called on Garland to hold a briefing by July 26 with the Reproductive Health Task Force, which the DOJ established weeks after the Supreme Court struck down Roe. That task force, the senators reminded Garland, vowed last year to monitor state-level action that infringes on patients’ “ability to inform and counsel each other about the reproductive care that is available in other states.”
For millions of women, traveling to out-of-state providers for abortion has become the only way to terminate a pregnancy. Since the fall of Roe last year, clinics in states where abortion remains legal say they’ve been inundated with patients from the dozen-plus states that have obliterated access to the procedure.
“It’s terrible. We’re at a 50% increase just in the year,” Adrienne Mansanares, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, told HuffPost last month. While out-of-state visitors once comprised around 20% of the branch’s patients while Roe was in effect, that figure has soared to more than 50%.
“We’ve seen hundreds of patients from Texas, patients from as far away as Florida and North Carolina and South Carolina,” Jennifer Welch, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, told HuffPost last month. “We’ve seen patients from 34 different states,” she added, which is more than triple the number her branch saw in years prior.