Abortion-Travel Bans Are "Next Frontier" With Roe Set to Topple [View all]

Nine states—Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin—have abortion bans on the books, albeit unenforceable now, that were enacted before Roe was decided in 1973, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

What’s not clear is whether states can enforce their laws beyond their own borders—in particular, by trying to stop their residents from traveling across state lines to terminate a pregnancy. Trying to impose their abortion policies upon other states is what one legal expert calls “the next frontier in anti-abortion legislation.”

“It’s going to be an invitation to states to innovate in restricting and banning abortion,” said David S. Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law in Philadelphia, who’s authored an upcoming article on cross-state legal issues that could arise in the context of abortion rights. “There are going to be a number of states who are not satisfied with just knowing that there’s no abortion happening in their own state. They’re going to want to do more than that.”