Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, millions of women have lost access to reproductive healthcare. Twenty states have enacted restrictive abortion policies, with 13 of those states banning abortion completely. In many states, the restrictions go far beyond abortion, severely limiting women’s access to contraception, preventive medicine, and all but the direst forms of emergency care. In every state, these restrictions have disproportionately harmed women and girls of color, LGBTQI+ persons, and members of other vulnerable groups, many of whom already face substantial obstacles to obtaining quality healthcare.
Immigrant women face some of the strongest obstacles to accessing reproductive healthcare after Dobbs. As of June 2024, 1.9 million undocumented immigrant women live in states with abortion restrictions. Nearly 6.7 million Latinas, over a third of whom were born outside the United States, live in states that have or are likely to ban abortion. Many of these women are concentrated in border states like Texas and Arizona, which have some of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country. They are also more likely to live in communities with very few healthcare services. As states become increasingly hostile to reproductive healthcare, including by imposing harsh financial and criminal penalties on healthcare providers, many communities are also facing a critical maternity care shortage.
On top of these barriers, immigrant women face additional dangers arising from dual efforts to criminalize abortion and immigration. Texas, for instance, has passed some of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the country, including a near total abortion ban and S.B.8, a bounty hunter style law that allows private citizens to target anyone “aiding or abetting” access to an abortion. At the same time, Texas has enacted extreme anti-immigrant policies, including laws that criminalize driving with an undocumented immigrant in the car. The intersection of these laws creates perilous risks for immigrant women seeking reproductive healthcare, because any interaction with criminal law makes them vulnerable to arrest and deportation. Even seeking legal services like preventive care in highly criminalized environments can lead to arrest and deportation.
Crossing state lines has become the primary way women living with abortion restrictions can access care. In Texas, more than 35,000 women traveled across state lines to get abortion care in 2023. But this option is largely inaccessible to many immigrant women because strict enforcement regimes prevent them from traveling safely on the roads. US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) operates over 100 checkpoints within 100 miles of the Southern border, where officers are permitted to screen passengers for anyone without immigration status. These checkpoints are an often-insurmountable barrier to reaching care. A woman traveling from the border city of Laredo, TX to the closest abortion clinic in Las Cruces, NM would have to cross at least six CBP checkpoints, forcing her into an impossible choice between deportation and her healthcare needs.
Women in immigration detention also face substantial threats to their sexual and reproductive healthcare. The Biden administration has issued policies aimed at mitigating the impact of restrictive abortion laws on pregnant women and girls in immigration custody. This includes a policy preventing ICE from placing pregnant, postpartum, or nursing mothers in immigration detention. The administration also required the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which oversees the care and custody of unaccompanied children, to house pregnant youth in states where they can get reproductive healthcare or, if they are in a state with restrictive abortion laws, to transport them to a state where they can receive an abortion if they require it.
These protections are far from secure. An administration that does not support abortion rights could rescind these protections, leaving pregnant women and children in immigration detention with few options if they require abortion care. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy blueprint, advocates for rescinding these protections and issuing new policies that would prevent ORR from transporting girls in states with restrictive abortion laws—where the majority of their facilities are located— to states where they can obtain care. For women and girls who have recently completed long migration journeys through Central America and Mexico, where as many as 80 percent have experienced sexual assault, access to reproductive health services when they reach the United States is critical, often lifesaving, care.
The rollback of women’s rights in many parts of the world, including access to the full range of sexual and reproductive health services, has had an enormous impact on forcibly displaced women and girls. All women need access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, including abortion. The Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) advocates for safe and secure access to sexual and reproductive healthcare for migrant and refugee women, in the US and everywhere women are seeking safety from persecution, conflict, and crisis.
Reproductive healthcare is a fundamental right. All women, including immigrant and refugee women, have the right to be safe and to make decisions about their bodies, their families, and their futures.