The danger for many people isn’t medical — it’s legal.
We can see hints of that system in states where abortion rights have already been heavily restricted. “We’re already in a post-Roe world in places like Texas,” says Elisa Wells, co-founder of Plan C, an online abortion resource, noting that expansive bans like SB 8 have rendered abortion functionally illegal in much of the South. In places where abortion is all but inaccessible, there are some echoes of an earlier era, like well-off abortion seekers heading to “safe” states like New York and California for their procedures. But Texas as well as places outside the US where abortion is currently criminalized don’t look like 1970s America.