The 2022 midterm elections should have been a bloodbath for Democrats. The consequences of President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan were still fresh in voters’ minds. People were facing record-high inflation, a spike in crime, and a growing crisis at our southern border. And Biden was facing credible allegations that he had been personally involved in his son’s overseas business affairs.
But just as despair was setting in among the Democrats, along came an extraordinary gift in the form of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, a ruling that returned abortion law to the states. The landmark decision sparked fury among the Left. The issue galvanized the party’s base and breathed new life into Democratic prospects in the coming election. Angry voters are motivated voters. And Republicans, who had utterly underestimated the power of the Left’s outrage, waited in vain for their red tsunami to materialize in November.
The wrath from the Left continued to be felt in 2023 when Republicans in many states lost winnable races and pro-life ballot initiatives lost big.
While abortion access rights may still be a winning issue for Democratic candidates and related ballot measures, according to The New York Times, the Dobbs v. Jackson decision has had a negative impact on the abortion services industry. The ruling has made it far more difficult – and expensive – for abortion providers to do business – even in deep blue states.
The Times notes that many providers who have tried to expand into states with more liberal abortion laws have “faced fierce local resistance” and they’re discovering that “blue states can often be almost as hostile to their presence as red ones.”
As a result of the new challenges, the abortion industry, which “has always been a difficult business, with tiny-to-nonexistent profit margins,” is struggling.
The Times recounted the story of two doctors who operated an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C. Convinced in early 2022 that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade in June, the pair decided to open a new clinic in California. They said that when most landlords learned the clinic would be performing late term abortions (after 20 weeks of pregnancy), they refused to rent to them. In September, they finally found a landlord in Beverly Hills who was willing to offer a lease.
However, shortly after the doctors “filed the necessary paperwork to obtain an operating license and began extensive renovations,” a pro-life group called “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, started a series of protests: papering the building with fliers of aborted fetuses, projecting the words ‘murder mill’ onto its facade and marching outside the seven-story building, which was home to dozens of other health care businesses.”
In June 2023, “roughly two months after the protests began and about four months before the clinic was supposed to open its doors,” the landlord rescinded the lease, citing a clause which stated, “Tenant will not do anything in the Premises that unreasonably obstructs or interferes with other tenants or occupants of the Building.” The doctors had spent nearly $2 million and have since sued “both the landlord and the city of Beverly Hills.”
The National Abortion Federation, a professional association of abortion providers, released a report last year which said there had been a steep rise in violent acts against abortion clinics in 2022. According to the report, “major incidents like arson, burglaries, death threats, and invasions with burglary (231%), stalking (229%), and arson (100%) [were] seeing some of the largest increases.” According to the NAF, the perpetrators had been emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision.
The Times’ report claims that various state and local governments are making it more difficult for abortion providers to do business. For example, in Pennsylvania, “free-standing abortion clinics must sign a ‘transfer agreement,’ a contract with a hospital within 30 minutes that can offer emergency care if needed. Last September, a county commissioner in Lancaster warned local hospitals against signing such an agreement with the new clinic.”
Many abortion clinics are facing another problem: “Most of their clients can’t pay them. … A recent study from the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health and rights organization, found that 73% of abortion seekers had incomes under the poverty line.”
Because “federal Medicaid funds cannot be used to cover abortions,” clients under the poverty line must rely on “private insurance or state-supported Medicaid programs and abortion funds.” Only 17 states provide funding for abortions, and the reimbursement rate is a mere fraction of the total cost of the procedure.
How long will it be before U.S. taxpayers are made to reimburse providers for these abortions?
Regardless of the current challenges facing the abortion services industry, Planned Parenthood isn’t going to let them bring it down. The organization’s Great Rivers of St. Louis affiliate announced last week it plans to send a mobile bus to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that will offer free vasectomies, medication abortions, and emergency contraception.
Better hurry up. There’s already a waiting list for free vasectomies.
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Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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