Alabama’s Threats to Prosecute Abortion Helpers
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 10 May 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In August 2022, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall made a guest appearance on a local conservative talk radio show. It was two months after the US Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, and abortion was now illegal in Alabama. And Marshall addressed rumors that he planned to prosecute anyone helping people get abortions out of state.
“If someone was promoting themselves out as a funder of abortion out of state,” Marshall explained to the host, “then that is potentially criminally actionable for us.”
This particular threat launched an epic legal battle with implications for some of the most basic American rights: the right to travel, the right to free speech, the right to give and receive help.
This week on Reveal, reporter Nina Martin spends time with abortion rights groups in Alabama, following how they’ve adapted to one of the nation’s strictest anti-abortion policies—and evolved their definition of help.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 0:05.3 | I'm Al Leadsden. |
| 0:07.3 | Robin Marty was on national television when Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022. |
| 0:13.6 | It was Friday, and I was asked to do a live segment with CNN headline news. |
| 0:21.0 | You want to bring in Robin Marty. |
| 0:23.0 | She's director of operations of West Alabama's Women's Center. |
| 0:26.6 | Robin, good morning. |
| 0:27.5 | So you are in Alabama. |
| 0:29.1 | If this happens, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, |
| 0:32.5 | how does that impact your facility there today? |
| 0:35.8 | Right. |
| 0:36.5 | At the time, Robin was running an abortion clinic in Tuscaloosa, the West Alabama Women's |
| 0:42.3 | Center. |
| 0:43.3 | Abortions were already extremely restricted in the state, and the clinic was performing almost |
| 0:49.3 | 40 percent of them. |
| 0:51.3 | Robin is calling in from her home office, but CNN has her on a split screen with the protesters gathered outside of the Supreme Court. |
| 1:00.2 | So in Alabama, we have a law that is on the books that states that all abortion is illegal. |
| 1:06.4 | And our understanding is that that means that the moment that the court says Roe v. Wade is gone. |
| 1:11.8 | We will immediately stop all services. |
| 1:15.3 | The Alabama law that would go into effect if and when Roe fell |
| 1:19.8 | would make abortion illegal in virtually all circumstances. |
| 1:24.3 | Under the law, anyone performing an abortion could face up to life in prison. |
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