By Jess Mador | WABE
Thursday, July 20, marked one year since Georgia’s law banning abortion at roughly six weeks of pregnancy took effect.
Six weeks is before many people realize they’re pregnant, and the law has meant navigating a host of changes for patients and clinics across the state.
The biggest change is having to turn away so many patients when their ultrasounds show their pregnancies are beyond six weeks, said Aneisha Jacobs, a nurse practitioner and nursing supervisor at Feminist Women’s Health Center.
“I would say almost every day we have to turn a patient away because they’re measuring over the six, maybe they’re measuring at seven or maybe they’re measuring at eight,” she said. “So we give them other clinics that they can go to out of the state of Georgia, which are going to be more north than us.”
Georgia is among the states seeing the most patients turned away from clinics that provide abortions since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, according to a recent national report from the Society of Family Planning, a research group that supports abortion access.
Jacobs says it is often overwhelming for patients to hear they may need to travel out of state for an abortion.
“It’s very emotional because it’s moreso telling someone no to a service that you used to offer before and then also, maybe they have kids already and they can’t take off this time to go on this trip because they’re working,” she said. “It can be stressful, but we can only be the bridge to connect them to care somewhere else.”
Also stressful for patients and clinics is the presence of anti-abortion protesters outside clinics.
“On abortion days, we have to figure out how are we going to … get in the clinic ourselves and get patients in the clinic safely,” Jacobs said.
Aneisha Jacobs, a nurse practitioner and nursing supervisor at Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, peeks through the blinds to check on…
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