Quick hit: Roe v. Wade doesn’t really exist and here’s how we got there

For a while now, most experts have operated under the assumption that anti-choicers never need to get Roe v. Wade overturned by the Supreme Court. Instead, they can just make it nonexistent in the practical sense. Here on this site we’ve covered TRAP laws, ultrasound bills, and other legislation that is making legal abortion impossible. Today, ThinkProgress has a terrific write up about where we are in terms of reproductive rights in states like Texas, as well as historical context as to  how we got here. 

Via ThinkProgress:

We first heard from Marni Evans a few days after she’d received an ominous voicemail. “I am calling from your doctor’s office,” the message began. An appointment for an abortion that Marni had scheduled for the next morning was suddenly canceled.

Marni isn’t the only woman in Texas who received such a call. On the last day of October, a conservative federal appeals court granted the state’s emergency request to reinstate part of an anti-abortion law that another judge had blocked just a few days earlier. That provision, which requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, will force many of the clinics in Texas to shut down. So, with the Fifth Circuit’s order in place, clinics had to start turning women away on the first day of November. Hundreds of women like Marni woke up to the news that their appointments weren’t going to happen.

Marni knew she still wanted an abortion — but she wasn’t sure if she would be able to get one in Texas. So she used her frequent flier miles to book a one-way ticket to Seattle.

“I thought that it would be a smart idea to just get out of Texas,” she explained. “I wasn’t sure what I would find at other Texas clinics because I was aware that over 100 women’s appointments had been canceled on the same day. And I was concerned that I would be stuck waiting for weeks and weeks and weeks.”

Read the rest here.

Zerlina Maxwell really wants to be a superhero, but will settle for blogging.