For the really rich, it is true: Traveling to get an abortion and evading prosecution will more or less be a cinch. But the chasm between really rich and everyone else gets deeper every day, and it is simply not true that a suburban white mom of three in Missouri or the teenage daughter of well-off Christian conservatives in Alabama will be in a position to get the abortion she needs when she needs it with ease and without risk to herself, her family, or the people willing to help her. Even crossing to another state to obtain an abortion may entail legal jeopardy as states consider various means to prohibit and criminalize abortion travel.
It's going to be a shock. Precisely because of racial and class disparities in every area of American life, white middle-class women are used to having certain kinds of systemic support: hospitals where they can feel cared for, responsive physicians. Those supports can no longer be taken for granted. To consider even the most cynical caricature of white middle-class womanhood, the Karens who are used to calling the manager when they have a complaint, the reality is going to be that, in many places, there will no longer be a manager to call. And if there is, he might report you to authorities. The choices that people, even people of means, make about how to end pregnancies are going to require calculations they have rarely had to do before: about their own risks of criminal prosecution and about state-enforced systems that are there not to work on their behalf but to limit and punish their choices.
And don't be fooled: While scrutiny will be sharpest on poor and Black and brown people, women and people with uteruses of every race are going to be questioned not only about their unintended pregnancies but about the miscarriages of their wanted pregnancies. In states where post-Roe trigger bans begin at conception, various forms of birth control--including IUDs--could be considered abortifacients, and there will be strenuous attempts to make them inaccessible or illegal. For similar reasons, people undergoing IVF treatments may find that their embryos have been granted rights they did not previously have.
Those who live in states with fewer restrictions, even in states that have wisely strengthened protections in recent years, will certainly have an easier time. But their circumstances will be changed too, by the influx of patients from other parts of the country. Wait times and, with them, pressures on viability limits will increase. Moreover, resting easy on the idea of a patchwork of safer states assumes Republicans will not find a way to enact a federal legislative ban. For years, I've been told that will never happen. For years, I'd also been told that Roe would never fall.
In time, abortion's illegality is going to affect everyone: you, your friends, your loved ones, your community, your kids, and your parents. It's going to affect you if you or someone you know wants an abortion, and it's frankly going to affect you even if you don't.
