Footnotes for Draft of Erasure
1. Many books and essays over the years, deciding what to include here and how to refer to the books listed in the Reading section.
2. Koblitz book fn
3. Cooper Owens, Deirdre, Medical Bondage:Race, Gender and The Origins of American Gynecology (UGA Press 2017)
4. More about the widespread nature of erasure
5. Landon’s history
6. Kadambari’s history
7. the exhibition opened about three weeks before the 2024 presidential election
8. Center for Reproductive Rights timeline for overturn of Roe
9. Trapp Laws, explain
10. https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/key-facts-on-abortion-in-the-united-states/ Accessed February 17, 2026
Abortions can be provided in a variety of settings. Recent data on site of abortion care are limited, but historically the majority of abortions have been provided at brick and mortar clinics that specialize in provision of reproductive health care. Some private office-based physicians also offer abortion services and in more recent years, there has been an emergence of virtual only clinics that offer medication abortions.
Brick-and-mortar clinics vary, but they can offer medication abortion, procedural abortions, and services for abortions later in pregnancy. Many clinics in states where abortion is restricted or banned stopped offering abortion services shortly after the Dobbs ruling and the overall number of brick-and-mortar independent clinics in the US has decreased over the years, with over 75 independent abortion clinics shutting down between 2022 and 2024. Contrary to expectations though, the number of abortions from these clinics increased overall since the Dobbs ruling. The distribution of facilities that offer abortion care varies widely by state and geographic region, and the increase is largely driven by the expansion of virtual abortion clinics. While virtual clinics can remove geographic barriers for those seeking abortion care, their services are limited to medication abortion which is only available to those seeking abortions early in pregnancy. Even prior to the ruling in Dobbs, access to abortion services was very uneven across the country. The proliferation of restrictions in many states, particularly in the South, greatly constrained the availability of services in some areas. In the wake of overturning Roe v. Wade, these geographic disparities have only widened.
Telehealth can be administered by providers from traditional brick-and-mortar clinics or by virtual-only clinics. Virtual clinics began to proliferate after the FDA revised its in-person dispensing requirement in 2021, rising from no virtual clinics in 2020 to 226 clinics in 2023 (representing 24% of facilities that offer medication abortion).
In a telehealth abortion, the patient typically completes an online questionnaire to assess (1) confirmation of pregnancy, (2) gestational age and (3) blood type. If determined eligible by a remote clinician, the patient is mailed the medications. This model does not require an ultrasound for pregnancy dating if the patient has regular periods and is sure of the date of their last menstrual period (in line with ACOG’s guidelines for pregnancy dating). If the patient has irregular periods or is unsure how long they have been pregnant, they may need to obtain an ultrasound to confirm the weeks of gestation and rule out an ectopic pregnancy and send in the images for review before receiving medications. The follow-up visit with a clinician can also happen via a telehealth visit.
Research has found that the provision of medication abortion via telehealth is as safe and effective as the provision of the pills at an in person visit. Yet, in some states that have not banned abortion, telehealth may not be available because of state-level restrictions enacted prior to the Dobbs ruling that require patients to take the pills at a physical clinic, require ultrasounds for all abortions, or directly ban telehealth for abortion care. Of the 36 states that have not banned abortion, 12 had at least one of these restrictions as of March 2024.
Medication abortion has emerged as a major legal and legislative front in the battle over abortion access across the nation. Multiple cases have been filed in federal and state courts regarding aspects of the FDA’s regulation of medication abortion as well as the mailing of medications.
Some states have passed shield laws, designed to reduce the legal risks for clinicians who provide abortion care to patients who live in states where abortion is banned or restricted. The shield laws bar the clinicians’ resident state from extraditing them if a restrictive state attempts to prosecute the clinician for performing an abortion that is otherwise legal in their home state. As of September 2024, 8 states have shield laws in place that explicitly protect providers regardless of patient location.
Data from SFP’s latest #WeCount report show that one in four (27%) abortions were provided via telehealth in early 2025. These telehealth abortions include those provided by brick-and-mortar clinics, virtual clinicians, and clinicians in states with shield laws who prescribe medication abortion to patients in states with bans or telehealth restrictions. Note: The counts for medication abortions, particularly those provided by mail, reflect the number of pills dispensed by providers, not necessarily complete abortions. Add link:
11. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/us/supreme-court-dobbs-roe-abortion.html
12. “The Untold Story of the Network That Took Down Roe v. Wade” by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer, New York Times, May 28, 2024
13. Dias, Elizabeth and Lisa Lerer, The Fall of Roe and the Rise of a New America, 2024, Flatiron Books, New York
14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_Defending_Freedom#cite_note-WaPoBlackstone-19, accessed January 20, 2026.
15. Story of the Network
16. https://www.aaihs.org/slavery-the-plantation-myth-and-alternative-facts/
17. Lorie Brown, zoom conversation November 5, 2025
Brown is the author of Contested Spaces: Abortion Clinics, Women’s Shelters and Hospitals, (London, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013) During her research for this book she visited Jackson Women’s Health Center many times beginning in 2006.
18. https://reproductiverights.org/cases/scotus-mississippi-abortion-ban-dobbs-jackson-womens-health/#case-documents Scroll down to Timeline
19. Story of the Network
20. https://frontlinetv.com/supreme-revenge-full-film
21. (the Fall of Row, p.148)
22. Ibid
23. Dias and Ferer
24. https://adflegal.org/about/history/ see heading: “ADF Achieves 14th victory at the Supreme Court Since 2011, accessed February 15, 2026
25. Center for Reproductive Rights timeline for overturn of Roe
26. Untold Story of the Network
27. Ibid
28. July 22, 2021, Supreme Court of the United States, On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Cout of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Brief for Petitioners
Chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/184703/20210722161332385_19-1392BriefForPetitioners.pdf p.4
29. Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act
30.https://reproductiverights.org/cases/scotus-mississippi-abortion-ban-dobbs-jackson-womens-health/#case-documents- search Go to “Oral Arguments transcript and replay” pp 18-22
31. This quote is to offer an example of what Justice Sotomayor had in mind during the above discussion. “One way to address when moral status begins is to ask when does it end? If we look to the other end of life – death – we gain one insight into what matters. Over 50 years ago, most countries moved from a cardiorespiratory definition of death to a brain death definition. It is not the presence of a heartbeat that matters, but the presence of brain function. Indeed, some have even called for a move from whole brain or brainstem death to neocortical death – the complete lack of consciousness. While no country has adopted a neocortical definition of death, many jurisdictions allow the withholding or withdrawing of life‐prolonging medical treatment if a patient is permanently unconscious…prolonging life by administering treatment that is futile (such as when a person is unconscious with no chance of improving) cannot be in the patient's best interests, and withholding and withdrawing treatment in such cases would be lawful. So, if our life, our biography as James Rachels put it, ends when we become unconscious permanently, it begins when we become conscious. Consciousness depends on the activation of the cortex by thalamocortical connections around 24 weeks after conception. “The Unethical Texas Heartbeat Law” by Casey Michelle Haining, Louise Anne Keogh and Julian Savulescu https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9320804/ accessed February 16, 2026