78 Patients and 10 Hours Inside an Abortion Clinic in the South

On a disgustingly hot Thursday in June, car after car pulled into the parking lot of A Preferred Women’s Health Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, and left their engines running to cool off the abortion seekers sitting inside. They could be waiting well over two hours before getting a notification on their phones that it’s their turn to enter the clinic. Two years after Dobbs, APWHC is one of vanishingly few places in the South where someone can get an abortion.

Thousands of patients now travel to North Carolina for care despite considerable barriers: After Republicans rammed through an abortion ban last summer, patients can only terminate their pregnancies until 12 weeks of gestation. They also are forced to make two in-person clinic visits with a 72-hour waiting period in between, the first to receive state-mandated counseling and the second to get their abortion. This means North Carolinians and abortion seekers from out of state compete for limited appointment slots while providers do their best to keep up with the demand and the extra paperwork.