In early May, Politico leaked a draft of a Supreme Court opinion overturning the landmark Roe v Wade ruling. Hundreds of thousands of people protested the decision. Then on June 24, the Supreme Court overruled Roe v Wade, ruling that the legality of abortion is up to individual states to legislate.

Louisiana was one of 13 US states with a “trigger law,” meaning legislation was already in place that, with the fall of Roe v Wade, instantly made abortion illegal throughout the state. Louisiana’s law allows no exceptions for rape or incest. Trigger laws in every surrounding state –  Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas – will soon make abortion illegal there as well.

On June 21, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed into law a bill that further bans abortion from the moment of “fertilization and implantation” and imposes criminal penalties of between one to 15 years in jail for any doctor who provides one. There is an exception if the pregnancy threatens the woman’s life, or if the fetus would die soon after birth; in such cases, two physicians need to diagnose the procedure as necessary. Since physicians administering abortions could risk jail time if an abortion is deemed unnecessary, advocates and experts worry the requirement will lead to more women’s deaths as hospitals consult attorneys and government officials to determine the legality of an abortion.

Legislators in Louisiana cite electoral pressure to be anti-abortion absolutists. Louisiana’s handful of politicians who do support abortion rights risk blowback from powerful anti-abortion lobbies like Louisiana Right to Life. New Orleans City Councilmember JP Morrell has been quoted in local outlet Gambit saying “the safer vote is to always vote against reproductive rights”.

The state’s three remaining clinics had survived until now despite decades of increasingly baroque abortion restrictions in Louisiana that have closed over a dozen other sites. Back in 1992, there were 17 abortion clinics in Louisiana. Then there were eleven. Then five. Then three. Burdensome legislation even included specifications about procedure room size. The state health department could also immediately close a clinic if it violated any state law, including small paperwork violations. In fact, an inspector from the Louisiana health department was visiting the New Orleans clinic on the day Jen went; Russell-Brown said this was a common occurrence.

Read the full article about abortion access in Louisiana by Delaney Nolan at AlJazeera.