Daniela & Julia: Immigration, Abortion, & the Fight for Bodily Autonomy (with AIA) Episode 12

🔍 A Closer Look

In partnership with Abortion in America, this episode of My Body. My Pod. with Mini Timmaraju features Julia and her daughter Daniela, a young immigrant whose access to abortion care was blocked by Florida’s abortion ban.

Before we dive in, it’s important to ground ourselves in what’s happening across the country. Right now, undocumented people, immigrants, and people of color are being targeted, surveilled, and subjected to violence. When leaving your house feels unsafe, fear shapes daily life—where people go, who they trust, and whether they seek help when they need it. That fear reaches into exam rooms and clinics. It affects access to abortion. It affects access to prenatal care. It affects access to basic health care. And when people delay care, avoid care, or are denied care altogether, the consequences are real—and often devastating.

Access to care is never just about whether a service exists. It’s about whether you can safely reach it.

That reality shapes Daniela’s story. When she needed an abortion, Florida’s six-week abortion ban left her with no real choice—just a deadline designed to run out before most people even know they’re pregnant. For Daniela, that meant leaving her home state to access health care that should have been available in her own community.

These laws force people across state lines, layering financial and logistical strain onto those with the least room to maneuver—including immigrants, people of color, young people, and families already navigating systemic barriers. When politicians restrict abortion this way, they don’t eliminate the need for care—they impose unjust burdens on individuals and families least able to carry them. At its core, this comes down to a simple principle: decisions about pregnancy should belong to the person who is pregnant, not the government.

🛬 Big Picture: Overlapping Barriers to Care

Across the U.S., undocumented people, immigrants, and people of color are being targeted, surveilled, and subjected to violence by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

That climate of fear shapes daily life—where people go, who they trust, and whether they seek medical care at all. Health care providers have said that people are increasingly skipping their prenatal visits citing concerns about ICE raids.

Abortion bans don’t exist in isolation. They intersect with immigration enforcement, racialized surveillance, financial and systemic barriers to health care, and everyday fear—reaching into clinics, exam rooms, and the most personal decisions people make about their bodies and their futures.

For communities of color, immigrants, and undocumented people, abortion bans collide with surveillance, and the threats of being violently targeted. The result isn’t just denied care—it’s compounded harm, trauma, and preventable health risks.

Overlapping systems are creating barriers to reproductive care:

• Climate of fear from ICE raids: Fear of criminalization for seeking abortion care or pregnancy outcomes, combined with fear of being deported or unfairly targeted makes it so clinics and exam rooms become places of anxiety instead of safety.
• State abortion bans: 1.9 million undocumented immigrant women live in states with abortion restrictions, leading to 1 in 5 patients now traveling out of state to access abortion care, some up to 700 miles away.
• The Republican-made health care crisis: Trump and Republicans have created a health care crisis, stripping health care from 15 million people, with 22 million people facing sky-rocketed costs.

Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, low-income, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, young people, rural communities, and people with disabilities are disproportionately harmed by these overlapping barriers to care.

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MY BODY. MY POD. WITH MINI TIMMARAJU.