New Prison Policy Initiative briefing explores impact of Dobbs on women under community supervision

I often say to students (and sometimes highlight here) that every big legal story has some kind of sentencing echoes.  This new Prison Policy Initiative briefing makes that point with respect to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling two years ago.  The full title and subtitle of this briefing summarizes its coverage: “Two years after the end of Roe v. Wade, most women on probation and parole have to ask permission to travel for abortion care.  Since the 2022 Dobbs decision, 21 states have restricted abortions earlier than the Roe v. Wade standard. Now, more of the 800,000 women on probation and parole must seek abortion care out-of-state — but for many, whether they can get there depends on an officer’s decision.” 

Here is an excerpt from the briefing’s discussion of its key findings:

To understand how this post-Dobbs landscape impacts women under the U.S.’s massive system of community supervision, we examined standard supervision conditions in each state, along with the number of women who must comply with them. We find that the one-two punch of abortion and supervision restrictions impacts an estimated 4 out of 5 womem (82%) on probation or parole nationwide.  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.

Specifically, we find that, excluding federal probation and post-release supervision, 82% of women on probation and 85% of women on parole live in states that (1) either completely ban abortion or restrict it based on gestational age and (2) list travel restrictions as a standard condition of supervision.