Access to abortion and increased poverty for women and children are inversely correlated: as access to abortion decreases, feminineand child poverty increase. Women who try to access abortions are more likely to already be mothers, and more likely to be living below the poverty line. In post-Dobbs America, abortion is illegal or severely restricted in approximately half of the states. In states where abortion access is most restricted, women and children experience poverty at the highest rates in the nation.

This article is the first to document the law and policy strategies that collectively increase abortion access and reduce feminine and child poverty. Innovative approaches like the 2023 Texas lawsuit by women who almost died because they were denied abortions are yielding results that directly support women’s economic autonomy. State legislatures and governors are legally enshrining women’s rights to access abortion and doctors’ and nurses’ rights to provide abortions. And voters are going to the polls in droves to protect abortion access, with victories in every state where it was on the ballot in the two years since Dobbs. This article chronicles those abortion access strategies and more, including the increasing importance of
medication abortion, which remains vulnerable to legal challenges despite the Supreme Court’s 2024 dismissal of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine’s lawsuit for lack of standing. 

Jill C. Engle *

* Jill C. Engle is the Interim Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging and a Professor of Clinical Law at Penn State Dickinson Law (University Park). For her contributions to the work on the article, special thanks to my outstanding research assistant Eboni Barbour. For their feedback on the article, many thanks to Professor Emerita Kit Kinports; to those who attended my presentation of it as a work-in-progress at Seton Hall Law School in March, 2024; and to the participants at the Law and Society Association’s Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network’s session during the annual meeting in May, 2023, where I presented it as an early-stage project.

Beyond the parties to a case in which an injunction is ordered, few outsiders may be aware they exist. And even when an order for injunctive relief makes the news, its exact terms may not be widely known. But like legislative enactments and publicly reported appellate decisions, injunctions can carry significant legal implications.

Indeed, depending on the nature of the relief declared, such equitable orders can last in perpetuity. And as a practical matter, third parties outside of the litigation may be directly or indirectly impacted by their terms, which prohibit or mandate certain actions. It is this last feature that has drawn tremendous recent concern, including calls to end what are referred to as nationwide or universal injunctions.

But instead of making injunctive practices even more obscure, this article advocates further noticing injunctions. That is, given the possible power and importance of these judgments, permanent injunction determinations should include opportunity for comment by interested stakeholders and other members of the public before final. Once issued, permanent injunction orders should be officially and publicly posted. In this way their edicts would be clear, widely available, and easily accessible by all for years to come. As such, a national injunction-only database or other electronic repository would be one way to provide notice relating to requested input and issuance, to ensure that these extraordinary orders are known, respected, and shared broadly over time.

Mae C. Quinn *

* Professor of Law, Penn State University. Many thanks to Jennifer Hendricks and Margo Schlanger for their careful reads and insightful comments, Ben Barros and Tracy Thomas for helpful conversations, Carmen Johnson and Jhody Polk for their ongoing leadership and openness to collaboration, and Portia Pedro for speaking truth to procedure in her inspiring scholarship. All errors are mine alone.