The Quickie: Americans Live Even Further from Abortion Clinics One Year Post-Roe
For Immediate Release: June 29, 2023
Welcome to “The Quickie” — Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s daily tipsheet on the top health care & reproductive rights stories of the day. You can read “The Quickie'' online here.
In today’s Quickie: Americans live increasingly far from abortion providers, NY equal rights ballot initiative campaign launches, and MS suffers from an abortion and maternal health crisis.
GROWING APART: AMERICANS LIVE EVEN FURTHER FROM ABORTION CLINICS ONE YEAR POST-ROE: Last week, NPR featured analysis by Professor Caitlin Myers of Middlebury College, showing the dramatic increase in distance that Americans must now travel to an abortion provider. One year ago, before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, less than 1% of the U.S. population was more than 200 miles from a provider and the average person was 25 miles from a provider. As of April 2023, a whopping 14% of the population is more than 200 miles from their nearest clinic and the average American is now 86 miles away from one.
"Most [patients] are poor or low-income – 75% are low income, 50% are below the poverty line – and more than half are reporting a disruptive life event like they've just lost a job, they're being evicted, they've broken up with a partner," Myers points out to NPR. "We also know that they're very credit constrained. More than 80% of people seeking abortions in one large influential study had subprime credit scores, so this is not a population that just hops on a plane easily."
A decade ago, those who had to travel 200 miles to a clinic largely lived in rural areas, already suffering from sparse health care services, but now, even large metropolitan cities in some states are in abortion care deserts. In particular, due to bans, pregnant people in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma must travel the furthest to access basic health care. However, it’s not all bad news: some states have worked to expand accessibility to abortion care. For example, all residents in Maine now live within 25 miles of an abortion clinic.
Read more at NPR.
“NEW YORKERS FOR EQUAL RIGHTS” BALLOT MEASURE CAMPAIGN LAUNCHES: Today, reproductive rights, civil rights, and labor organizations launched a $20 million campaign, “New Yorkers for Equal Rights,” to ensure passage of a proposed state constitutional amendment protecting New Yorkers from discrimination and guaranteeing the right to control their own bodies. The amendment would protect abortion access and prevent government interference in decisions about pregnancy.
New Yorkers will have the opportunity to vote on the Equal Rights Ballot Measure in 2024, where New York could become the first state to categorize discrimination on the basis of pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes, reproductive autonomy, and access to reproductive care as sex discrimination in the state constitution. The 2024 Equal Rights Ballot Measure would add protections for pregnant New Yorkers, women, disabled people, older New Yorkers, and LGBTQ+ people among other groups to the state’s constitution.
"New Yorkers deserve a constitution that reflects and protects us all. We will be relentless in our pursuit of equality and advancing these critical protections in our State Constitution because our rights, bodies, and futures depend upon it,” Georgana Hanson, Interim President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Empire State Acts, said. “The partnership formed today by New Yorkers for Equal Rights sends a clear message that New Yorkers won’t take our rights for granted. It is our charge to demonstrate to voters that they have the power to preserve and protect their most fundamental rights and freedoms by passing the Equal Rights Amendment, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes — including abortion care."
Read more at Axios and the New York Times.
“MEET THE MISSISSIPPI MOMS WHO FEAR FOR THEIR LIVES A YEAR AFTER ROE FELL”: Last week, USA Today featured the stories of pregnant people in Mississippi who have struggled to access abortion and maternal care in the year since Roe was overturned. Mississippi — home to Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the subject of the Dobbs decision — now bans nearly all abortions on top of having among the worst rates of maternal and infant mortality. In the first six months since Dobbs, 2,100 fewer abortions were performed in the state.
As USA Today explains,
“When a baby isn’t going to survive — well, that’s the worst. Mississippi’s abortion law makes no exception for fetal nonviability. Neither do the laws in Tennessee, Alabama or Arkansas. Richardson has to wait for the fetus to die, or the mom to go into labor or get dangerously ill.
“That’s not the professional standard of care, Richardson said. And emotionally, it’s rough. She's doing prenatal checks and the pregnant woman is fielding questions about the due date for a baby who will never come home.
“‘Nobody's thinking about women,’ [Dr. Lakeisha] Richardson said. ‘Nobody's thinking about our well-being or our emotional well-being or our health or our mental state when they make these laws.’”
Read these moms’ stories at USA Today.