Anti-choice states aren’t satisfied. Now they want to punish traveling for abortions | Moira Donegan

A husband who doesn't want his wife to get an abortion could sue the friend who offered to drive her, according to this legislation's own architect

How free can any woman be in a country where her right to control her body and family depends on the jurisdiction where she happens to live? Republicans are looking to find out. Over the past few weeks, as Republican officials in anti-choice states seek to make their abortion bans enforceable and compel women into childbirth, a new front has opened up in the abortion wars: roads. The anti-choice movement, through a series of inventive legal theories and cynical legislative maneuvers, is now attacking women's right to travel.

In a court filing last month, Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall wrote that he believes his office has a right to prosecute those who help women travel across state lines in search of an abortion. The filing comes in a lawsuit from two women's health clinics and an abortion fund, which sued Marshall after he publicly stated his intention to criminally investigate organizations like theirs, which provide financial and logistical help to pregnant patients seeking to leave the state. In his response, Marshall unequivocally states that Alabama, which bans all abortions with no rape or incest exemption, views any effort to help women cross state lines as a criminal conspiracy".

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist