[crowd chanting] women's rights! male announcer: good evening, in a landmark ruling the supreme court today legalized abortions. kathryn diss: almost 50 years ago, the supreme court gave women the right to abortion for the first time in us history. male: what about the baby's rights? you're all gonna go to hell. kathryn: the controversial ruling in the roe v. wade case has didivided americans for decades. male: abortion is murder. kathryn: now the conservative south is launching its biggest challenge. philip gunn: on behalf of the state of mississpi, we are pro-life. phil bryant: it is law.

sam lee: all pro-lifers that i know of reject there is a constitutional right to an abortion. kathryn: the new majority on the supreme court is poised to decide the fate of legal abortion. female: stop telling me what to do. kathryn: a woman's right to choose is on the line. india kent: it's taking away part of our right. it's very scary, it's very scary. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ kathryn: the vast mississippi river runs for thousands of kilometers. it cuts right through st. louis here and is the natural border between missouri on my right and illinois on my left, but this divide is much more than just this river.

it's intensely political, and now it's deeply personal, where women find where they call home dictates their access to abortion. ♪♪♪ kathryn: st. louis, the gateway to america's west, has become ground zero for a battle of the past. ♪♪♪ ♪ well, it ain't nobody's fault but mine ♪ ♪ ain't nobody's fault but mine ♪ ♪ oh, if i die and my-- ♪ kathryn: america's unofficial home of blues and jazz, this city sits deep in the midwest bible belt. over the past decade, missouri has chipped away at a woman's right to abortion. colleen mcnicholas: to sit back and think about the fairly

rapid deterioration of access in missouri, you know, 30 clinics perhaps when i was born, 11 a decade ago, and now just 1. colleen: i'm good, how are you? colleen: it's really devastating to know that the state is not interested in meeting the needs of the people, and every day seems like a fight to keep this clinic open. colleen: good morning, good morning. kathryn: dr. colleen mcnicholas has been on the front line of the pro-choice movement for 12 years. colleen: with strategy and with fight and with perseverance, we will continue to show up. colleen: nothing changed since we saw you last week? no bleeding, nothing like that? okay. kathryn: the clinic is not only an abortion provider, but offers a range of services for women, from pap smears to contraception. colleen: we have a full recovery room back here. kiesha, no patients here right now. kathryn: abortion is so sensitive in some states, gaining access to film inside this clinic has taken me a year.

colleen: this is the last remaining abortion clinic in the state of missouri, serving more than a million reproductive-age women. kathryn: in 2019, the state health department almost shut down the clinic, and today it still has to comply with many laws which have nothing to do with medical care. colleen: and the way that they do that is by manipulating things like building regulation, for example, requiring that the door frame, for example, be a certain width, or the hvac system meet a certain standard, and you know, especially for places that were just providing medication abortion, it's impossible to retrofit your building to fit that standard. you know, if i'm taking care of a patient for miscarriage management, for example, there are no requirements about how big the window frame is or what the hvac system is. it is the exact same procedure, the only thing that's different is the diagnosis, or why we're doing it.

kathryn: not only are clinics being targeted, the state government also forces patients to jump through numerous hoops just to access care. colleen: missouri requires two in-person visits that are a minimum of 72 hours apart. remember, there's only one remaining abortion clinic, so if you live 300 miles from that clinic, you have to drive 300 miles. once we get through that hurdle, then we have to have you come back. so, for lots of folks, what it means in reality is, how do i get more than one day off of work? colleen: okay, we ready? colleen: there are so many logistic barriers that folks face. colleen: and then remember, your cervix is like a donut, when i look at it, it's a circle with a hole in the middle. okay, i'm gonna open the hole of that donut just a little bit, just to be able to remove that pregnancy tissue, okay? we'll talk you through it, in about five minutes we'll be all done, sound good? kathryn: colleen now only performs on average one abortion a day.

colleen: it's really easy to isolate abortion as a single procedure or to demonize it, villainize people who have it, if you don't know them, if you don't spend the time talking to them and understanding why they need abortion. ♪♪♪ kathryn: missouri doesn't fund abortion except in extreme cases such as rape or incest. it makes access difficult for low income earners and the poor. india: you gonna hit your head, you better stop. female: nail polish, lip gloss, hair band, and more stuff in here. india: okay, so what's in this one? female: i wanna stay prepared. india: india kent, 31 year old single mother of three, has decided to end an unwanted pregnancy. it's not a decision she's taken lightly. female: no, no!

india: it is the more loving choice for me. it will set me back, at least i'll most definitely be a single parent, so i'll be raising this child alone, not being able to go to work. financially, we'll make it, but we--it'll be a struggle. i just cannot--i just can't--just can't stop saying, it's just not the right time for it, it just wasn't the right time for it. india: so, what do you need to do? does this number match this number? do you need to borrow? kathryn: she's going to college to study forensic science, so she can provide a better life for her three children. india: i've thought about my future, i thought about being able to go to school, i've thought about being able to provide more for my children, the ones that i do have here, i would now have to take from them to give to this new baby. kathryn: but to have that choice, india is having to make plans to leave missouri. india: it's kind of upsetting, because women like me

who can't really afford the $1,000 cost, or the $800 cost that they're charging to have this done, i have to go over to the state of illinois. it just doesn't make sense, and it's very frustrating. ♪♪♪ david eisenberg: every person should have control over their future, whether it'd be access to healthcare, access to educational opportunities, economic opportunities, and it all intersects with the ability to control when and if to have a child. kathryn: dr. david eisenberg performs abortions in missouri, but now does most of his work in the neighboring state of illinois. david: so, here we are, welcome to illinois, the land of reproductive justice, where, you know, reproductive rights refugees from missouri, arkansas, kentucky, tennessee, iowa, kansas, oklahoma, texas, alabama, mississippi,

are coming to get their care. ♪♪♪ kathryn: illinois is like an island, surrounded by conservative states that restrict access to abortion. it's become an oasis of abortion rights for women in the south and midwest. david: good morning. david: we recognized the threat, we could see the writing on the wall, and felt like the only way for us to ensure access to care for people in the south and the midwest was to ensure that we were located in illinois, and so here we are. david: hi, shaquira. i'm dr. eisenberg, i'm gonna be taking care of you. kathryn: two thirds of his patients cross state lines to access his care. david: nervous? shaquira: yes, i am. david: you're gonna be just fine, just--we're not gonna do anything for a minute, let that medicine have time to work, okay? kathryn: abortion can be a difficult time for a woman.

shaquira is the only one out of 60 patients who lets us in the room for her surgical abortion. david: where'd you live in alabama? shaquira: selma. dad: selma? mm-hmm. i went to med school in alabama, uab. female: where's that at? david: university of alabama, birmingham. female: oh, birmingham. david: i've been to selma, it's a good town. [shaquira mumbling] i don't know about that. david: what'd you say, you don't know about that? i will say i liked birmingham better. david: having gone to medical school in alabama, having seen the threat in alabama where people couldn't access the care that they needed really solidified my interest in doing this work, developing the expertise that i felt like i needed to be able to move the issue forward, and help people have better access and make things more equitable and more just. i never thought that missouri would have become

so challenging. kathryn: india is following a well-trodden path that many women make from missouri. she's crossing the border to illinois, where abortions are cheaper, and take just a few hours. india: we are crossing the muddy mississippi river. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ kathryn: one in four women in america will get an abortion during their lifetime. female: black baby, don't kill your baby, don't kill your black baby, we love him. female: please run! female: you are paying money this morning for someone else. kathryn: the laws here are more liberal, but the anti-abortion movement is highly organized.

female: to that open purple door on the right. female: don't go in there. they have no idea they're gonna stand before god, all of them, the workers. india: when you walk into an abortion clinic, your mind is already made up. male: they will murder your child. india: you cannot make me change my mind. they just try to--just try to make me feel so low, just so low. you never know what a woman is going through, what her reasonings are about wanting to get an abortion. you know, she could have been raped. male: but you have a heart full of murder. india: it bothers me when someone sits back and judges a woman because she gets an abortion. like, it's her temple, she can do what she wants to do with it. male: ma'am, aren't you glad your mother didn't do that to you? india: this is my body. i just feel no one should be able to tell you what you can and cannot do with your own self.

female: what we got is seven weeks on the dot, and there is just the start of a pregnancy. india: is that the little-- the little black sac there? female: yup, so this little black sac right here is called the gestational sac, and that's the first thing that develops in a pregnancy. kathryn: india is early on in her pregnancy, so she has the option of taking the abortion pill rather than surgery. female: i'll pass you to dr. king, and she's gonna take you down to the private room, okay? have a great day, sweetie! india: you too, thank you! india: okay, do i just sit right here? erin king: yeah, you can sit right there, and they'll be right in. [india sighing] okay. ♪♪♪ kathryn: how are you feeling? india: i am feeling positive about the situation. i'm feeling positive about my decision.

i'm not overwhelmed, i am just waiting to take the pills. ready to get it over with. kathryn: about half of patients choose to take the abortion pill over surgery. erin: india? how are you doing? india: fine, how are you? erin: do you have any questions about the education that you received? erin: i think india is a great example of a lot-- all of our patients. they know their lives, and if that patient says, "i cannot be pregnant right now, i cannot even be pregnant and give this baby away to someone else to parent," they know their bodies the best. erin: i'm just gonna put it in your hand. kathryn: dr. erin king administers india's abortion pill. erin: there you go, so just swallow like a regular pill. male: god's threats are not a mere empty threat, it is a warning to say that if you choose death,

that death will come to you. kathryn: outside, volunteer escorts like maggie olivia are on the front line, helping patients to the clinic door safely. maggie olivia: we stand with them for as long as they'd like until they get inside of the clinic, and then when they're ready to walk back out, we're here to walk them back to their car. female: y'all have a safe drive home. kathryn: having had an abortion last year, she knows what it's like to be harassed by these protestors. female: ma'am, if somebody is threatening you to do this-- maggie: we try and distract them if there's people like this being rude and harassing patients from the sidewalk. maggie: if you turn onto the lot, they can't approach you. maggie: protestors get very sneaky. probably the most insidious masquerade as healthcare professionals or people who are here for you. male: we're willing to help you financially. maggie: just turn left into this lot here, and they can't approach you once you're on the lot. male: i love how we also wanna help you. kathryn: so, this woman is just saying to this patient that

they use the stem cells from the babies to make medicines. she's talking at this woman, trying to convince her not to have an abortion. male: young lady, turn to jesus. kathryn: the woman who's been approaching patients is retired nurse angela michael. every day she parks her van here and offers free ultrasounds and advice. kathryn: angela, what have you got here? angela michael: well, this is our medical mobile unit. when we saw there was no resources out here in granite city for these young women that were going in there like herds of cattle, i just felt like god called me to get up off my knees and to do something to help them, to see if maybe i could show them their babies, to be a window to the womb. kathryn: so, this is an ultrasound on wheels. angela: yes, absolutely. kathryn: how many women would you get through the van? angela: oh my gosh, we've seen between 30 and 40 sometimes a day, 'cause i know you've been here, they've been very busy, so a lot of times--

kathryn: thirty to forty a day? angela: it's a lot. kathryn: i haven't seen a single one come in here. angela: yeah, there's a lot. kathryn: i haven't seen any though, are you saying there's 30 to 40 have come in your van? angela: oh, i'm--through the years we've had that much come in here. back in the early, what, 2000s, late '90s, there was, i mean, we had them lined up out here. kathryn: angela tells me over 28 years she's convinced 6,000 women to keep their unborn babies. kathryn: i appreciate and understand your point of view that you want to bring children into the world, and you have 13 of your own. do you think that your view should be imposed on someone else, though? angela: no, no, i'm offering them a service. male: they need your mercy. kathry the anti-abortion movement is guided by deeply conservative christian values. ♪♪♪ sam: your blessing, father. kathryn: sam lee's long fight to outlaw abortion in missouri

began 36 years ago. sam: the body of christ. sam: we're happy that here in missouri we're down to one abortion clinic. kathryn: the catholic deacon started with peaceful protest. sam: my core belief is that every human life should be protected from conception through birth through death. i also know that this is where god wants me, this is something where i feel called to do it. in my case, it's more in the legislative end of things. sam: that beard's looking better and better every week. kathryn: for decades he's successfully lobbied state legislators to wind back women's rights to an abortion. sam: thank you, mr. chairman and members of the committee. as a long time pro-life lobbyist, missouri will have the strongest law in the country, among all the states, that would defund planned parenthood. and in addition, missouri would be the first-- sam: from the founding of our country up until 1973, most states banned most abortions.

kathryn: the feminist movement of the 1960s and '70s galvanized around a woman's right to abortion. [crowd chanting] what do we want? our right to choose. when do we want it? female: for years the united states has had among the most backward and reactionary abortion laws of any country. male announcer: good evening, in a landmark ruling, the supreme court today legalized abortions. kathryn: the roe v. wade decision ignited and divided the country. male: what about the baby's rights? you're all gonna go to hell. kathryn: since then religious conservatives fought hard to take away the right by campaigning for state bills that restrict or ban abortion. but their main focus now is . sam: reversing roe v. wade isn't going to make abortion unlawful for the whole country, but it will allow individual states, like they were able to do before 1973,

will allow them to regulate to the degree that they want. missouri will be one of those states. donald trump: the most important decision a president can make is the appointment of a supreme court justice. kathryn: donald trump hand picked three judges, deliverin conservatives the majority vote on the bench. they're now poised to hear their first case challenging abortion rights, the mississippi bill. philip gunn: so, i'm proud to be here today to sign this bill on behalf of the state of mississippi. we are pro-life. phil bryant: it is law. [applauding] sam: with this mississippi case, we are probably in the best position now to--if not reverse roe v. wade, to certainly undermine it to a much greater degree than we have been able to in the past. ♪♪♪ kathryn: if the supreme court rules in favor of the mississippi bill, it would ban abortion after 15 weeks,

except when the mother's life is at risk. upholding the bill would overturn roe v. wade, and hand back power to the states to determine their own abortion rules. as a result, 22 states would effectively ban abortion outright overnight. and more states could follow. ♪♪♪ robin: do you wanna swing? what do you wanna do? do you wanna show us the slide? robin: the state acts like there's this, like, timeline of when you can find out that something is wrong, and that's just not true. kathryn: robin and june finally have the family they've always dreamt of, but back in 2016, they had to make the hardest decision of their lives. twenty one weeks into a pregnancy, their unborn daughter, grace, was diagnosed with a fatal disease. robin: without working lungs, she could not survive, so i

needed to have an abortion, and i didn't choose that she was gonna die, but i got to choose how that went for her. kathryn: for three years they had endured rounds of ivf and a miscarriage. the loss was devastating. robin: this is actually the only thing we got from the hospital. yeah, they gave us a tiny, little baby bracelet. this is her, like, footprints and her little hdprints. kathryn: but before the procedure could go ahead, robin had to go through missouri's state mandated consent process. robin: i had to sign saying that i'd heard the heartbeat of the fetus. i had to sign asking if i'd seen an ultrasound of the baby, and then she has to have me sign saying that i've been given a paet, and i open it up to the first page, and it says, "life starts at conception. you are terminating a separate and unique human life" in bold,

in its own paragraph, and i started sobbing, and but it was also just so furious. i was, like, this is callous, this is not tone-deaf, this is intentional, this is so inappropriate for my situation. ♪♪♪ erin: the missouri state legislature, lots of people who live in missouri don't want abortion to exist in missouri, and so there's been a lot of push against the gynecologist, against reproductive healthcare clinicians to provide anything related to abortion, even referrals for abortion. erin: oh, thank you, you're awesome. kathryn: erin king is married to david eisenberg. together, they make up a quarter of the doctors offering care

to around 2 million women across the two states. it makes them a target of extremism. david: we've had protestors at our house, in our neighborhood. i'm very eyes-wide-open about the work that i do, and the consequences that i am willing to take on, and i recognize that my family bears those consequences. kathryn: doctors have been killed, assaulted, clinics bombed, and incidents are on the rise. david: they are terrorizing the people who need care, they are terrorizing the people who pride it, me and my staff. i've had to work with folks from the us marshall service and other law enforcement agencies, and you know, they've asked me whether i wanted firearms training or whether i wanted to wear a bulletproof vest. i feel like if i let the terrorists change who i am and what i do, then i'm letting them win. sam: i think it's deplorable to, for any abortion doctor or

abortion clinic personnel or anybody affiliated with that, to be in any way threatened or assaulted. ♪♪♪ female: we're gonna wear the hat today? kathryn: sam tries to dissuade women from having an abortion by offering alternatives. sam: ultimately, the only way to do that is to convince women not to have one in the first place, that there is assistance out there, and to keep their baby, and we'll help you the best way we can. kathryn: sam and his wife gloria founded this maternity home back in 1982 for homeless pregnant women in crisis. sam: so, did these chairs get donated, or did you guys buy these? gloria: i think we--somebody raised some money to purchase some items for the house. sam: i would love to see no abortions in missouri, and by that, i mean not only that none are performed here, but that no women even considers going out of state to get an abortion.

female: see if we've got enough car seats in there. female: yeah, there are, i left them in there last night to make it easier. sam: hey, peggy, how are you? this is that big bill we worked on-- sam: the laws of the state don't apply out of state, but we have a bill that we're working on that would allow missouri law to apply to abortions that are performed in these states that have legalized abortion. it'd be a pretty big deal, but that's probably our next big legislative goal. ♪♪♪ kathryn: with the supreme court reconsidering roe v. wade later this year, doctors and advocates in missouri are gearing up for a decisive fight. i'm heading across town to meet them at a pro-choice fundraiser. ♪♪♪

female: we are in dire circumstances, because when you don't have legal access to abortion, people die. we are in the fight of our lives to maintain the basement, the very bare minimum of access to reproductive healthcare. robin: i am a person that has had an abortion in the state of missouri, and the process was so dehumanizing and so insulting that i started talking about it and have since become a reproductive rights advocate. living in missouri, i'm definitely afraid that my rights and my daughter's rights are going to be eroding rapidly here. david: 'cause when you get down to it, it's not about protecting and promoting the health of people or reducing the number of abortions, it's about controlling the status and agency of women in this society. we're fighting a juggernaut of people who believe that women don't deserve the same rights as men. kathryn: you've all said it's pretty dire circumstances, is it a case of not if but when a state has no abortion clinic

in america? david: it's already gone. roe v. wade may be the legal precedent that this country holds out, but there are so many people who by nature of where they live or their resources cannot access abortion care, that we are living in a post roe world today in the state of missouri. women and people who are pregnant will always find a way to end their pregnancy when it's not the right time, or the right space, it's just a question of how injured or hurt they'll be physically, emotionally, and/or how many people die. kathryn: they're holding the line, but the coming year will determine if they can keep the last clinic in missouri open. male announcer: house bill 126 is the legislation in question, and it's just the latest attempt by missouri's republican-led general assembly to restrict abortion access in the state. dr. mcnicholas, nice to have you again. colleen: thanks so much for having me.

colleen: i'm not sure how the supreme court will decide the mississippi case. federal laws and decisions out of the supreme court, although super-important, are not what drives local policy. that we all need to be engaged in our local and state legislatures, that's where this work of dismantling access to abortion is happening. what keeps me in this fight and showing up every day are the patients. i can put voice to those experiences to really bring abortion back to the place it should be, which is in the healthcare realm. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪