Volunteer clinic escorts protect a affected person from anti-abortion activists outdoors the Hope Clinic for Ladies in Granite Metropolis, Illinois, final month. Clinics in states like Illinois, which has much less restrictive legal guidelines, have been reporting an inflow of sufferers from neighboring states.
Angela Weiss/AFP by way of Getty Photos
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Angela Weiss/AFP by way of Getty Photos
Volunteer clinic escorts protect a affected person from anti-abortion activists outdoors the Hope Clinic for Ladies in Granite Metropolis, Illinois, final month. Clinics in states like Illinois, which has much less restrictive legal guidelines, have been reporting an inflow of sufferers from neighboring states.
Angela Weiss/AFP by way of Getty Photos
Even earlier than final month’s Supreme Courtroom determination overturning Roe v. Wade, a rising variety of folks had been touring throughout state strains for abortions.
Practically 1 in 10 abortions in 2020 had been offered to sufferers who’d crossed state strains, in line with a report launched Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute. That is up from 6% in 2011. Because the report notes, the rise occurred as a rising variety of states had been passing abortion restrictions.
Interstate journey for abortion is anticipated to proceed to extend as extra states enact abortion bans in response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being Group determination, issued on June 24.
“These are a baseline for the modifications that we anticipate to see and already are seeing as far more restrictions are occurring within the wake of Dobbs,” stated Isaac Maddow-Zimet, who co-authored the report for Guttmacher, a analysis group that helps abortion rights.
Maddow-Zimet notes that the report appears at information from each earlier than Dobbs and earlier than the implementation of SB 8, an abortion ban that took impact in Texas in September 2021.
Already, clinics in states like Colorado and Illinois, which have much less restrictive legal guidelines, have been reporting an inflow of sufferers from neighboring states.
The report checked out not solely the place abortions had been offered but in addition the place sufferers had been from.
It discovered that abortion restrictions didn’t essentially translate to fewer abortions. In Missouri, for instance, the variety of abortions offered there dropped considerably between 2017 and 2020. Throughout the identical interval, the abortion charge for residents elevated by 18% when out-of-state abortions had been taken into consideration.
“We will see an increasing number of of these sorts of conditions, as an increasing number of states put bans in place, the place most residents are going to should journey out of state for care,” Maddow-Zimet stated.
Guttmacher examined information from sources together with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, state well being departments and its personal survey of abortion suppliers. The report didn’t seize self-induced abortions, which many consultants predict will turn into more and more frequent, notably for folks in states with abortion bans.