Abortion Bans Would Force Women To Travel Hundreds More Miles For Care
As more states move to temporarily ban abortion, ostensibly to preserve medical supplies for the coronavirus pandemic, a new report reveals how much further women will be forced to travel for care at a time when leaving home is deeply discouraged.
New policies temporarily barring abortion would make care inaccessible for some patients and significantly delayed for others, according to a report released Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports reproductive rights.
A handful of states hostile to abortion rights ― Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Indiana and Alabama ― have moved to eliminate abortion by classifying it as a nonessential procedure that must be postponed under the state’s emergency response to the COVID-19 crisis. Multiple court challenges are underway to block the bans from going into effect, which has kept abortion accessible in most states for now. Abortions have been halted in Texas and Oklahoma, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Leading medical groups, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, oppose categorizing abortion as nonessential, noting that the “consequences of being unable to obtain an abortion profoundly impact a person’s life, health, and well-being.”
The abortion restrictions come as millions of people are urged to stay home to slow the spread of the coronavirus. But the bans will have the opposite effect, according to the Guttmacher report. Patients in states that shut down abortion services will be forced to travel hundreds of additional miles. In some cases, women will have to drive five to almost 20 times longer than usual.
Forcing people to overcome these challenges in the middle of a global pandemic places unconscionable burdens on them, and the consequences fall hardest on people who are already struggling to make ends meet. Rachel Jones, research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute
In Texas, home to 6 million women of...
