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Reveal

Crossing the Line: The Fight Over Roe

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.78K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2022

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, Florida is a case study in what can happen in states where abortion is easy to access.

Florida is an unexpected safe haven for people seeking abortions in the South. The state has 55 abortion clinics – more than seven other Southeastern states combined. But Florida is also increasingly an abortion battleground. Reveal found that calls to police from Florida abortion clinics for disturbances, harassment and violence have doubled since 2016.

Reporter Laura C. Morel spent months investigating the anti-abortion movement there and observed what it’s like to be an abortion provider in Jacksonville, where one particular clinic is under siege by a local anti-abortion group that has figured out a way to be near the clinic’s front door. Protesters rented a room in the same office park as A Woman’s Choice and now can legally, without trespassing, hold daily protests and even religious ceremonies on the private driveway that leads to the clinic. “As abortion providers, we should not have to be harassed going to work every day,” clinic owner Kelly Flynn told Morel. “I mean, no one's picketing the urologist that's doing vasectomies.”

For doctors who perform abortions, threats of violence are not new. In the 1980s and ’90s, anti-abortion extremists bombed and blockaded clinics and murdered doctors. We hear from David Gunn Jr., whose father performed abortions and was murdered by a fundamentalist Christian in Pensacola in 1993. His death led to the passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which makes it illegal to intimidate patients and staff at abortion clinics through force, threat of force or physical obstruction. But Morel found that this federal law, known as the FACE Act, does little to protect against the kind of harassment and intimidation providers face today. At A Woman’s Choice, only one person – a man who called in a bomb threat – has been prosecuted under the FACE Act.

What qualifies as “intimidation” varies by state. In California, it’s illegal to photograph patients and staff outside abortion clinics. But at A Woman’s Choice, protesters regularly photograph and film videos of patients, which staffers say makes them feel frazzled and afraid. If Roe v. Wade crumbles, abortion rights advocates warn that this kind of anti-abortion activism will spread, especially in places where abortion will remain legal.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for this podcast comes from WISE, the universal account that lets you send, spend,

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and receive money internationally.

0:08.0

With one account for over 50 currencies, who exactly is WISE made for?

0:12.6

It's made for Austrians and Australia.

0:14.7

South Africans and Sweden.

0:16.3

It's made for New Delhi, New York, and even regular York.

0:19.5

When you use WISE to manage your money across borders, you always get the mid-market exchange

0:23.7

rate with no markups and no hidden fees.

0:27.1

You can find 13 million customers and learn how the WISE account could work for you at

0:31.7

WISE.com slash reveal.

0:38.0

From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is reveal.

0:42.2

I'm Al Letzzy.

0:44.2

A recent bombshell leak of a draft opinion from the US Supreme Court has opened a new

0:49.4

chapter in the battle over abortion in this country.

0:59.8

People were protesting outside the Supreme Court after the leak confirmed what abortion

1:04.3

rights advocates had long feared.

1:07.0

That the court would overturn Roe v Wade, and nearly 50 years of abortion rights.

1:13.7

Although the opinion is not final, it's sent a signal that the high court will let states

1:18.6

set their own laws around abortion.

1:21.1

This means abortion could soon become illegal or greatly restricted in dozens of states.

1:27.0

Millions of women will be affected, and both sides in the debate are gearing up for

1:32.4

fight.

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