The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper S2023E16 - Without Roe: The New Abortion Landscape

A network of pilots and organizers helps women travel to doctors nationwide to access legal abortion procedures. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, at least 21 states have banned or restricted abortions, forcing countless women to travel hundreds of miles to seek care. "Without Roe: The New Abortion Landscape" examines the ongoing state-by-state struggle over whether abortion should remain accessible in America, featuring advocates coming together to protect access to the procedure while opponents try to restrict it. 

Th1s episode follows people whose paths had never crossed before coming together to protect access to the procedure: Alamo Women's Clinic moving its practice from Texas; a goat farming reproductive rights organizer with Midwest Access Coalition coordinating funding and logistics for patients; and an underground network of volunteer pilots known as Elevated Access transporting abortion providers and patients on small, private aircraft to ease the burden of their long journeys. Many paths lead to Carbondale in southern Illinois, fast becoming an oasis of abortion access surrounded by a sea of states like Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri that have banned or restricted the procedure. With rare access inside the clinic, the documentary also features stories of women seeking care. It chronicles intimate moments of hope and fear, all shrouded in a veil of danger, as the stakes for providers, volunteers, and patients could not be higher, each with lives on the line.