Reproductive rights are front and center as the presidential campaign enters the home stretch.

More than two years after anti-abortion forces achieved their long-held goal of overturning Roe v. Wade.

Despite the state bans that followed the Supreme Court ruling, the number of abortions has actually gone up,

even in states with the strictest bans. At the same time, infant mortality

rates have been rising. Sheffali Luther is reproductive health reporter at the 19th, which

covers gender politics and policy. She's also the author of undue burden, life and death

decisions in post-Roe America. Sheffali, I want to start by talking about the issue of abortions.

Now, the Society of Family Planning, which advocates for reproductive rights,

tracks this with a project called We Count.

And they say that since March 23, there's been a small but steady increase in abortions,

including in 10 of the 13 states with the strictest laws.

So what's going on here?

What's happening is very interesting, and in some ways not surprising for those of us who've

been following the data since Rokey Wade was overturned.

And what we've seen is this patchwork network has been developed to help people get around abortion bans in their state.

The two ways that we're principally seeing people use to get around these bands are, one, traveling out of states.

So maybe driving, maybe flying, maybe taking on some credit card debt, taking on immense financial hardship to travel from a place like Texas to Kansas or Illinois or New York

to get an abortion. But the other trend that is really important is the rise of telehealth. And so what

we are seeing is doctors largely in states with abortion rights protections and these laws

called shield laws, states like New York, Massachusetts, California, Maine,

are prescribing and mailing abortion pills

to people who live in states with abortion bans.

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