Embodied Journeyed: Crossing State Lines For Abortion
It’s been two years since the Supreme Court revoked the federal right to an abortion. Now, nearly one in five people seeking abortion care has to cross state lines to get it. Anita meets someone who spent 20 hours on the road to get her abortion, learns how folks afford thousands of dollars worth of travel and reviews the ways that Hollywood has taken on the abortion road trip.
Meet the guests:
- Taylor Shelton, abortion-seeker who traveled from her home state of South Carolina to North Carolina three times to get her abortion, shares the emotional toll that all that travel took and why she decided to join a lawsuit suing South Carolina over its abortion law
- Serra Sippel, interim executive director of the Brigid Alliance, talks about some of the tangible ways that her organization supports folks who have to travel for abortion care and how they navigate an ever-changing legislative landscape
- Gretchen Sisson, sociologist who studies portrayals of abortion in TV and film, traces the abortion road trip subgenre and explains how these representations affect the audiences who watch them
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Dive deeper:
A visualization of abortion travel from The New York Times
A Guttmacher Institute analysis on abortion travel & data on abortion numbers and travel
The cost of traveling for an abortion
More on Taylor’s story:
From NPR
From PBS
More on The Brigid Alliance
More ‘navigators’ helping people access abortion care
An Abortion Road Trip Movie List:
Grandma (2015), directed by Paul Weitz
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), directed by Eliza Hittman
Unpregnant (2020), directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg
Plan B (2021), directed by Natalie Morales
Red, White and Blue (Short 2023), directed by Nazrin Choudhury
Tripping (Short 2024), directed by Amelia Xanthe Boscov