Reproductive rights advocates in southern states are embroiled in a fight against severe restrictions on abortion access and a flurry of state-level GOP efforts to create more of them. They say President Donald Trump's second term threatens to make those obstacles worse — and they're calling on the rest of the country to back them up.
In a handful of states across the country, many of which are in the south, abortion is almost completely illegal with few exceptions, the most common being when necessary to protect the pregnant person's health. In other southern states, abortion access is extremely limited with restrictions imposed before most people know they are pregnant. Republican state lawmakers in Arkansas, South Carolina, West Virginia and others have introduced legislation this session seeking to further curtail residents' reproductive rights, including bills criminalizing education on abortion options, striking down exceptions to existing abortion bans and requiring anti-abortion views in sex education.
