Sue needed to leave her state to get an abortion. Like nearly 63 million women in the United States, she lives in a state where abortion is completely banned—only women deemed to be imminently dying are legally allowed to end their pregnancies. So, in her early twenties and already the mother of a young child, Sue made a plan to leave to get the care she needed. The only problem? She wasn’t allowed to travel without permission from the state. And the state said no.
The U.S. already has abortion travel bans—we just don’t normally call them that.
As a teenager, Sue and her boyfriend were pulled over for a routine traffic stop. Because she was wearing her boyfriend’s hoodie, which had a weed vape pen in the front pocket, she faced a felony drug charge.
Sue, who was pregnant at the time, was sentenced to six years of probation—the harshest possible sentence, despite no prior arrests or history of drug use. Sue tells Abortion, Every Day she was raised by a mother who struggled with addiction, and experienced firsthand how addiction could destroy lives.
Five years later, that charge—and an inescapable cycle of dehumanization within the criminal legal system—would ultimately trap her in her conservative state, preventing her from obtaining an abortion and forcing her to give birth to a second child.
This is because people who are on probation or parole must get permission to leave their state—which can leave their ability to have an abortion up to the personal discretion (and biases) of a single probation officer. As one of Sue’s attorneys, Molly Duane of Amplify Legal, tells AED, “So many people literally can’t travel without state approval—what does that look like when you live in an abortion ban state under the thumb of anti-abortion officials?”
Like so many other women who find themselves entangled within the legal system, Sue was a victim of a de facto travel ban, denied freedom of movement.
“I’m glad my second baby is here,” she says. “But no one should make that decision for anyone else. I just wish this had happened [having a second child] at a different time in my life, at a time when I was free.”
It’s no secret that anti-abortion states are increasingly trying to trap residents under their abortion bans—whether by trying to prevent abortion pills from getting in, or patients from getting out. While the attorneys general of Texas and Louisiana wage legal battles against out-of-state doctors who ship abortion medication into the state, Alabama AG Steve Marshall has threatened to stop abortion seekers from crossing state lines in the same way he would stop a sex offender from traveling without permission. Last year, Montana Republicans even proposed legislation that would criminalize pregnant women who leave the state—charging them for “trafficking” their own fetus.
There’s “no slippery slope” around threats to abortion-related travel, Duane says—the “slope has already slipped.”
Explicit policies surrounding abortion and travel are only half the story. According to Duane, the statements, biases, and extremist agendas from high-ranking state officials like Marshall, or governors like Greg Abbott—or even President Trump—are “emboldening lower level officials, at the state and county level, to behave at their absolute worst.”
But it’s local law enforcement officials who have the sweeping authority to stop people like Sue from traveling for health care and planning their families.
In 2024, the Prison Policy Initiative reported that 82% of women on probation and 85% of women on parole live in states that restrict abortion and include travel restrictions as a standard condition of supervision:
“That means that for the vast majority of people under community supervision, the ability to seek abortion care out-of-state is left not to the pregnant person, but to the discretion of a correctional authority, typically their probation or parole officer.”
Even when approval is given, the process and logistics of getting a travel permit can delay care, further limiting access. This is precisely what happened to Sue.
Shortly before the birth of her first baby, Sue’s partner died. Later, in the aftermath of this loss, Sue faced a DUI at 21-years-old. She received no leniency from the legal system; instead, as a grieving, single mother, she was required to pay exorbitant fees for frequent breathalyzer tests and an ankle monitor.
She never drank again, nor did she ever test positive for drug use. To this day, she remains prohibited from driving.
As Sue raised a newborn and struggled to hold down employment, she was required to take 5 a.m. breathalyzer tests. If she missed those tests, she was punished harshly. In 2025, the county informed Sue that because she’d missed a certain amount of breathalyzer tests, she was required to spend two weeks in jail. Sue had just learned she was pregnant, but had no choice but to comply.
She knew that to best care for the child she already had, she couldn’t keep her pregnancy. Sue was barely getting by raising a toddler as a single mother as it was, forced to jump through constant hoops for her probation. But by the time she was released from jail, she was too far along in pregnancy to have abortion pills shipped to her. Instead, she’d need to travel out of state for care.
In the coming days, Sue got in touch with abortion and practical support funds that could cover the cost of the procedure, travel, and lodging. All she needed was permission from the state. Because Sue was now on probation in two counties, she needed approval from two different probation officers. One agreed, but the other officer—who hailed from a county notorious within the legal community for its rigidity and cruelty—refused.
At this point, now 18 weeks into her pregnancy, Sue contacted If/When/How’s Helpline. The organization partnered with Duane to represent Sue, and they filed a legal motion requesting travel permission.
Time was of the essence: every day counted, as few states offer abortion care past the second trimester of pregnancy, and the cost of the procedure and associated recovery time increase dramatically with each day.
What followed was an exhausting legal back-and-forth and, eventually, an hours-long hearing with the same judge who had excessively sentenced Sue to six years of probation when she was a teen. While the judge initially signaled approval for Sue’s travel, they changed their mind and denied the request the following day.
If/When/How attorney Elizabeth Ling tells AED that Sue’s case “really illustrates that abortion bans and travel bans don’t have to be explicit.”
“We have a constitutional right to travel for abortion—but that doesn’t account for the many people in our country tangled up in our carceral system. While probation and parole are seen as less burdensome, they are still very much incarcerated, even if they live outside the jail.”
In the subsequent weeks after denying Sue’s request to travel, the county continued to surveil her. While this was part of the routine terms of her probation, there was an added sense, her lawyers tell AED, that the county was monitoring to ensure she remained pregnant.
When it was clear Sue wouldn’t be able to access abortion, she did everything she could to prepare for her second child. But she faced an uphill battle: the sustained, intense demand of court appearances, drug tests, and all associated costs made it nearly impossible for her to remain steadily employed or afford housing. After forcing Sue to give birth, the state left her and her family to fend for themselves.
“I am stressed out more than I was with one daughter,” Sue says. “Who will take my baby and my daughter if they [the county] come for me again? That’s what worries me now.”
If/When/How’s Helpline receives an average of 300 calls per month—sometimes from callers who are facing criminal charges or state investigations over their pregnancy outcomes, or from individuals like Sue who are navigating insurmountable legal barriers to access abortion. The right to travel for abortion isn’t just under attack—for some communities, it doesn’t exist at all.
In April, AED reported on a mother who had her daughter taken by Child Protective Services when they discovered she planned to take the teen for an out-of-state abortion. Some states, like Idaho and Tennessee, have passed laws restricting adults from helping minors travel for abortions or obtain them via telehealth. But even without formal, codified travel bans, the government can still block abortion-related travel for certain groups, like minors or criminalized individuals.
Sue’s ability to access abortion ultimately came down to the whims of a single probation officer and a small group of local law enforcement officials. According to Ling, this dynamic is all too familiar. Many of these cases, she says, hinge on individual, local-level law enforcement officials, who bring their own biases to each case:
“[Sue’s case] isn’t the exception—it’s how our criminal legal system is designed, where individual state actors have tremendous power, whether it’s the individual police officer who chooses to investigate someone based on their personal beliefs, or a prosecutor who chooses to charge or not charge someone with a crime.”
Duane agrees. In fact, she’s heard from at least one client who was pulled over by a cop while driving from a banned state in the direction of a state where abortion is legal. “The cop questioned her about whether she was going to get an abortion,” Duane tells AED. Again, this extreme behavior from police officers starts at the top: when cops see their state attorneys general or higher-ranking officials making sweeping threats against abortion patients, “that emboldens them,” Duane says.
Duane further stressed that many of these officials hold elected positions—including the judge who ultimately denied Sue permission to travel. “I have to wonder if maybe this judge, in this very conservative county, didn’t want to be known for letting someone leave the state to get an abortion.”
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In December, Sue and her legal advocates were excitedly counting down the days until the end of her six-year probation sentence. Instead, her probation officers informed Sue that because she’d missed some breathalyzer tests and court appearances in the midst of raising a newborn and toddler as a working single mother, that she was sentenced to six more years of probation. She’d also have to spend the next several days—including Christmas—in county jail, separated from her children.
“This is someone who had everything stacked against them, where, at every point in the process, she was subjected to the maximum, punitive measures,” Ling says. “She made the decision that was best for her and her family to seek abortion, and for that, was portrayed by the state as a monster.”
The devastating outcome more or less encapsulates all that Sue has faced at the hands of the state: county officials forced her to give birth—then couldn’t care less about her family or their circumstances, after the fact.
“I can’t do things for my kids and they’re too young to understand why—the situation I’m in. It gets frustrating,” Sue says. “I dream of being free. Free to travel with my kids. Free to be a better mom for my kids.”
If you’d like to support Sue, please donate here. For free legal help as a patient or health practitioner, call If/When/How’s free Repro Helpline: 844-868-2812
