The District of Abortion
Washington, D.C.’s murky legal status could have a devastating ripple effect on abortion nationwide.
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Washington, D.C. is one of the last outposts for abortion access throughout pregnancy in the United States. But the District of Columbia is not a state. Our murky legal status, a deliberate holdover from U.S. slavery, could have a devastating ripple effect on abortion seekers nationwide.
“Our” applies to the District’s more than 700,000 residents, including me. I am a longtime abortion journalist who covered the daily attacks that marked the first Trump administration and its most significant aftereffect, the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade via the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision in 2022.
The Trump administration’s second go-around is working to grind the fractured legality of abortion into dust and deny access in the meantime.