With a newly conservative Supreme Court majority raising concerns about the future of abortion rights in the U.S., Intercept senior reporter Jordan Smith and documentarian Maisie Crow wanted to show how the right to abortion has already been eroded across a large swath of the country, impacting millions of women of child-bearing age. The pair rented a minivan and set off on a 1400 mile road trip through Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi — states that have some of the most extreme abortion restrictions on the books — as a means of illuminating the hardships that women and doctors face in accessing and providing care. The pair talked to lawmakers, activists, doctors and abortion clients, revealing the history of attacks on reproductive rights, the role that religion has played in both securing and challenging those rights, and through video were able to show what it all means for women trying to exercise their right to decide if and when to become parents. Indeed, in Mississippi, Smith and Crow were granted intimate access to the state’s last remaining abortion clinic — to its employees and the activists that protect patients from swarms of anti-abortion protesters that regularly congregate in front of the clinic — and were able to follow one young mother as she navigated the state’s onerous restrictions on access to care, revealing a deeply intimate portrait, presented in print and in video, that is rarely included in reporting on abortion rights.
