In the 100 days since Roe v. Wade was overturned, 66 clinics in more than a dozen states have stopped providing abortions, according to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights advocacy and research group.
Of those 66 clinics, 40 still offer non-abortion services while 26 have shut their doors, the analysis found. Among them is Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Mississippi — the abortion clinic at the center of the Supreme Court case decided in June that dismantled Roe — which closed in early July with plans to move to New Mexico.
As of Wednesday, abortions are almost entirely unavailable in 14 states — Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin. And access is significantly limited in a 15th state, Georgia, where the procedure is allowed until the detection of fetal cardiac activity, which usually happens around six weeks of pregnancy.
The 14 states were responsible for 125,780 abortions in 2020, according to Guttmacher’s analysis. And 41,620 abortions were performed in Georgia the same year.
“Even before Roe was overturned, getting an abortion was difficult or outright impossible for many people, especially those who were already facing steep barriers to accessing health care, including people with low incomes, Black and Brown people, immigrants, young people, those with disabilities and rural populations,” said Rachel Jones, principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, in a statement. “These inequities are likely to worsen as clinic-based abortion care disappears in many states, many of them clustered in regions like the South.”
The Biden administration — as part of its efforts to mitigate the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision — announced on Tuesday it is giving clinics that provide free and subsidized family planning services an additional $6 million. Providers in Florida, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Wisconsin will receive the funds.
Since Roe was overturned in June, the Biden administration has used a federal law governing emergency medical care to challenge Idaho’s near-total abortion ban; warned pharmacists not to withhold prescription medications just because they can also be used to induce an abortion; and requested that mobile phone providers share information about their data retention and data privacy policies, among other efforts.
While anti-abortion groups this week celebrated the new abortion restrictions, they also slammed the Biden administration’s attempts to ameliorate the impact of the state-level abortion restrictions.
“While two dozen states are poised to protect the unborn and their mothers, saving as many as 200,000 lives a year thanks to the historic Dobbs victory, radical Democrats led by the Biden-Harris administration are determined to use the full weight of the federal government to impose abortion on demand until birth with no limits, paid for by taxpayers, nationwide,” said SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “Their agenda is wildly out of step with America.”
Abortion access remains in limbo in seven other states, including Indiana, South Carolina and Ohio, where laws restricting access to the procedure have been put on hold in court.
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By: Megan Messerly
Title: 66 clinics across 15 states have stopped offering abortions post-Roe
Sourced From: www.politico.com/news/2022/10/06/clinics-stopped-abortions-post-roe-00060534
Published Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2022 03:31:00 EST
