Two years after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the abortion industry is struggling
“Many clinics are finding out … that blue states can often be almost as hostile to their presence as red ones.”
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.
New Limits on Abortion in New York Introduced by…Planned Parenthood?https://t.co/9SWPKGvkmQ
— HotAir.com (@hotairblog) August 7, 2024
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.
Here we come, Chicago! 🚐 Our mobile health clinic will be in the West Loop with @ChiAbortionFund & @TheWienerCircle Aug 19-20, providing FREE vasectomies & medication abortion. EC will also be available for free without an appointment.
Reserve your spot: https://t.co/AVCDTg2FAj pic.twitter.com/6C5oFuXacU
— Planned Parenthood Great Rivers (@ppgreatrivers) August 14, 2024
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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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Comments
Abortion is a big Harris winning issue. Trump continues to torpedo his candidacy. He is on video last Thursday awarding the Presidential Freedom Medal to casino widow, Miriam Adelson. Presumably this was for freedom afforded the former president to spend the millions she donated. He actually said that the Freedom Medal was a lot better than the Medal of Honor because the guys who got that one were either dead or messed up with bullet holes. I can’t wait for you Trump bootlickers to defend this. The man is insane, clearly insane.
Who will you vote for that will be better for America?
That excuses everything? He’d still be preferable to Harris if he raped little boys, strangled them and then ate them? But no big deal because Harris is worse? He is the only man in the world Harris can beat because of behavior like this. He doesn’t care enough about the country to control his sloppy ugly mouth and keep to the issues. He is going to lose.
Whatever makes you happy.
Not insulting Medal of Honor winners makes me happy. Licking a moron’s boots delights you.
Get over yourself. He didn’t insult anyone. He made the very obviously true point that a Medal of Freedom is better than a Medal of Honor, because it ranks equal and yet you don’t have to get killed or nearly killed to earn it. Which one would you rather have?
Now if you want to argue that they shouldn’t rank equal, take it up with Congress. Get the law changed. But right now they are equal, so it’s obviously better to get the one you can get safely.
I don’t have an option to reply to your later comment for some reason, but I’ve always been told that calling them Medal of Honor “winners” is actually insulting. The correct term is “recipients.”
Hmm, perhaps that is so. All the more reason you should be outraged at someone who calls such recipients bullet ridden losers I should think.
The only one who called them “bullet ridden losers” was you E Howard. So…
Guess you didn’t watch the video. All the veterans organizations have condemned Trump’s words. But, you’ve got the blarney.
E Howard Hunt did not call them “bullet ridden losers”.
But neither did Trump.
As far as I can tell, nobody has called them that, but Trump has been falsely accused of doing so.
And yes, I did watch the video. Twice, in case I missed something the first time. There was no insult, whether spoken, implied, or intended. Merely a simple truism. And I don’t give a stuff what veteran organizations have said; I don’t base my opinions on their pronouncements, or on anyone’s.
but thats just it
HE DIDNT R APE LITTLE BOYS STRANGLE THEM etc
harris and the lefts agenda from day 1 has been to subjugate people to their whims
OMG!!!!!!
I guess I need to vote for RFK Jr because Trump is sooooooooo baaaaaad!
His mouth! OMG!
But I guess that’s OK. Because having another four years of a dimwitted president who is a puppet of Obama, and who will move us closer to Marxism and Socialism is sooooooo much better!!!!
I am a 30 year veteran and retiree who will crawl through glass to keep Harris and A-Walz from sitting in the White House.
Puffery from Trump is so much better than a lying valor stealing dickhead like A-Walz.
I did retire as the equivalent rank of a Command Sergeant Major. Unlike A-Walz.
I did deploy more than four times to the Middle East, leaving my family behind, unlike A-Walz.
I did carry a weapon of war, unlike A-Walz.
Did you serve, or are you just butt hurt because Trump made that comment about the Medal of Honor?
Whatever makes you happy.
Grr. I wrote this in reply to E Howard Butthurt, how did it get down here???
Ask Trump if he served! John Bolton is as far right as I am and he gave up on this knucklehead.
If I ever need to rely on the opinions of John Bolton, please take a ball peen hammer to melon.
That’s not surprising nor, IMO, a compelling argument against Trump. Bolton is an advocate of a US Foreign policy well beyond intervention and headlong into American Empire aka USA ‘world police’. Not quite a chicken hawk as he was in the NG but that was during the later stages of Vietnam and a large number of folks sought NG positions v risking a draft call or voluntary enlisting.
Fortunately DJT rejects the globalist interventionist viewpoint and instead seeks to implement foreign policy that places the direct National Security interests of.the USA, militarily, economically and culturally as THE priority of the US govt above that of every other Nation.
Feel better now?
Like totally, man. Thanks for asking. 🥰
This is obviously not true, since he’s not the president right now, and thus is unable to award any medals.
Mea culpa, pettifogger in chief. He is on news video from 2018 awarding the medal, and that is contrasted with video from last Thursday of his making the comments noted. Gee, it seems that clarification adds nothing.
Good Riddance, I hope the murder mongers end up in the poorhouse.
If Kamala Harris becomes president, expect an executive order attempting to achieve this within minutes of her taking the oath.
I suspect that the same decree will include non-optional abortions for enemies of the state.
Subotai Bahadur
The Dobbs decision did not outlaw abortion. It kicked the issue back to the states. California can allow doctors to perform abortions for up to 20 weeks, hell, why not 36? That’s legal. Democrats are getting a lot of mileage lying about the nature of the decision and their water-carrying lackeys in the media and in colleges are helping them along.
Trump, who can be witless and incoherent, should point this out when he’s asked about the decision. Even RBG thought Roe v. Wade was legally weak. So did SD O’Connor. “Penumbra.” Give me a break.
The effect of the Dobbs decision to move abortion back to State jurisdiction has largely pulled the fangs as an election wedge issue within Red and Blue States. Within the purple States and purple CD it still has potential to divide. IMO, as the great sorting continues and folks move within the US to areas that reflect their views coupled with some sort of electoral compromise being reached in Purple States then the issue will recede as an election issue. I predict it will basically become more like 2A with candidate score cards put out by the groups opposed and in favor and unless there’s a referendum or some tragedy it will become just another background electoral issue in our Team Red v Team Blue political system.
Some of this is also driven by the nearing ubiquity of Mifepristone & misoprostol. While they’re not available over-the-counter, they’re as easy to get (perhaps easier to get) than prescription-strength hair-loss treatments and viagra. There are dozens of ‘health care’ agencies, including Planned Parenthood that have established so-called ‘telehealth’ networks to be able to obtain an abortion from the comfort of your own home…or dorm room. And of course Plan-B truly is available on every college campus with scores of campuses offering Plan-B in vending machines…even on many ‘Catholic’ college campuses. Most urban high schools offer Plan-B at the school. It’s insane. You can’t get an Advil at school but you can get a high-dosage birth control pill.
The demonrats had 50 years to push an amendment to the constitution guaranteeing abortion. They never passed it and sent it to the states. Why you ask? Because the ERA failed to pass the states. If they had passed and sent it to the states it would have failed to. And that would have meant no more issue to beat the R’s over the head with every 2/4 years. FKH
FKH.
Why not. Everyone else has.
I don’t believe this article of abortion not h money, not for one minute, they are making hundreds of millions per year
And they don’t want to lose a dime of that cash cow.
Correct; its an all cash business, never having to rely on insurance payouts. Abortionists are still the lowest tier of doctors and likely command relatively pathetic salaries.
Can you imagine whining about the expense of having to have privileges in nearby hospitals so as to have some facility capable of fixing your surgical blunders?
Ghouls.
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.
Anyone really believe that one? That the profit margins on abortions are “tiny-to-nonexistent”? Not sure who they are trying to kid. Abortions were the cash cow for Planned Parenthood and is what allowed them to pay the obscene salaries to their national and local executive boards. And now that the money is getting scarce PP is cutting back services instead of cutting those same executive salaries.
You mean people who chop up babies and sell the parts for a living aren’t always honest? I’m shocked.
I also question their stats about the “violence” against them. Given the high percentages of increase I’m guessing they went from zero to one incidents or one to three or something similar. Still extraordinarily low numbers, which is why they have to pretend the percentages matter.
Don’t be so sure; I understand grandmothers have aimed assault prayers right at them. Some have used scary black Bibles as well.
Do those assault Bibles have an extended holy water clip?
Illegal in the UK.
The Abortion businesses are failing. The checks that went to National Democrat Politicians now are smaller and need to go to MANY Local Democrats.
Big Statewide Campaign takes Big State money. NY and CA clinics aren’t sending checks to Idaho.
So, basically they’re actually being treated like healthcare providers now and have to comply with the same rules and regulations that actual medical facilities and providers have to. Too bad. You claimed for years to be “healthcare” time to act like it.
I think the murderers are in the right on this one. They haven’t breached the lease. They haven’t done anything that obstructs or interferes with other tenants; it’s the protesters who are doing that. The murderers didn’t force the protesters to come out and do their thing; that’s their own choice. I’m on the protesters’ side, assuming they’re taking care to stay within the law, but they are the ones interfering with the building’s other tenants. Legally and in a good cause, but it’s still their doing, not the murderers’.
Curious why they’re suing the City of Beverly Hills as well as the landlord. For not arresting protestors?
THIS IS DONE ON PURPOSE:
” The ruling has made it far more difficult – and expensive – for abortion providers to do business – even in deep blue states.”
the more pain felt the more gain they hope for with street violence and/or votes
why arent billionaire dem donors FUNDING THESE ABORTIONS???
the exception clauses are still and will always be in place:
” a womens life is in danger”
that is as open ended as you can get to allow abortions to continue