Greater than 170,000 individuals have traveled out of state to obtain abortion care since January of final yr, in response to new information from the Guttmacher Institute, a determine underlined by the rising issue to entry care in some states.
Out-of-state care accounted for greater than 15 p.c of the estimated 1 million clinician-provided abortion procedures between 2023 and March of this yr, in response to the information. That determine has greater than doubled since 2020.
“Touring for abortion care requires people to beat big monetary and logistical obstacles, and our findings present simply how far individuals will journey to acquire the care they need and deserve,” Guttmacher information scientist Isaac Maddow-Zimet stated in an announcement.
“Regardless of the wonderful resiliency of abortion sufferers and suppliers, we will’t lose sight of the truth that that is neither regular nor acceptable,” he continued. “An individual shouldn’t need to journey lots of or hundreds of miles to obtain fundamental well being care.”
Fourteen states have near-complete bans on abortion, a speedy change sparked by the Supreme Court docket’s Dobbs determination in 2022, which overturned a previous federal customary mandating entry to abortion procedures.
States that border these with current near-total bans, akin to Kansas and New Mexico, noticed a majority of abortions of their state be from out-of-state sufferers. Texas’s abortion ban is without doubt one of the most restrictive within the nation.
Florida has additionally served as a state with comparatively quick access to abortion care when in comparison with its neighbors till earlier this yr. The state applied a strict six-week abortion ban in Could.
“The state of residence information makes it clear that this coverage change will probably be devastating not just for Floridians, but additionally for the hundreds of others who would have traveled there after being denied care of their residence states,” Guttmacher Vice President Kelly Baden stated of Florida’s ban. “As soon as once more, we see {that a} state’s abortion insurance policies have an effect on hundreds of individuals past that state’s borders.”
The brand new bans may even have political ramifications. Florida is among the many states with an abortion rights measure on the poll this November, and Democrats have hoped to make use of the referendums to extend turnout.
Two-thirds of the roughly 1 million abortions had been through treatment, the institute additionally discovered. That technique was underneath menace through a federal lawsuit till final week, when the Supreme Court docket dominated that the federal authorities does have the authority to restrict restrictions on sure abortion treatment.
