Story at a glance
- For women in Texas and Louisiana, travel times to the nearest abortion facility increased to more than seven hours following the Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization decision.
- Residents living in areas where the nearest facility is more than an hour away were more likely to be uninsured and lack internet access.
- Long travel times could take an economic toll on women seeking to end their pregnancy.
Pregnant U.S. women seeking an abortion have to travel more than three times as far after the Supreme Court overturned of Roe v. Wade, compared with travel times measured prior to the decision.
Before the Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization decision, women on average traveled 27.8 minutes to the nearest abortion facility. Now, that average time has risen to more than 100 minutes, which in some cases could equate to hundreds of miles, according to study findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
When the Dobbs decision sent the battle for abortion rights back to the state level, many state trigger laws took effect, some making the procedure illegal after about six weeks — before many women realize they’re pregnant.
As the majority of women who seek abortions live on low incomes, traveling out of state poses a barrier to obtaining care and can further delay the procedure, authors explained.
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Researchers collected geographic data to estimate travel times to the nearest abortion facility in each U.S. census tract. Times were measured pre-Dobbs between January and December 2021 and post-Dobbs in September 2022. They then compared the number of reproductive-age women living more than 60 minutes away from abortion care in each period. Alaska and Hawaii were not included in the study.
The post-Dobbs period assumed the closure of all abortion facilities in states with total or six-week abortion bans; the pre-Dobbs period included all facilities providing abortions in 2021.
Median time to an abortion facility increased from 10.9 minutes to 17 minutes. Pre-Dobbs, nearly 15 percent of reproductive-age females lived more than an hour away from a facility. Post-Dobbs, that total rose to 33.3 percent.
The largest increases in travel times were in the Southern U.S., where many states implemented more restrictive policies following the Dobbs decision.
For example, women in Louisiana and Texas saw an increase of more than seven hours to the nearest facility following the decision.
States with total or six-week bans on the procedure saw average times rise by more than four hours, while those without the bans saw minimal changes in travel times.
“When the Dobbs decision came down, I think many people thought ‘Oh, they can just go to another state to get an abortion.’ I don’t think people on the coasts really understand the vast distances involved and the barriers that people have in their daily lives to travel to make these very long trips,” co-author Ushma Upadhyay told CNN.
Upadhyay is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. The increased time it takes to access an abortion could have both health and economic costs, she explained, as women may need to take time off of work or arrange for child care while they’re away.
Census tracts where women had to travel more than an hour to reach a facility were home to more residents without health insurance, a high school diploma or internet access. Residents in these tracts tended to have lower incomes than those where a facility was less than an hour away.
When it comes to race, American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, and Hispanic groups experienced large increases in travel times to abortion facilities, while “these groups have historically worse pregnancy-related mortality outcomes than nonminority populations,” authors wrote.
In the United States, Black women are three times more likely to die due to pregnancy-related issues than white women.
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