XPost: alt.abortion, alt.propaganda.statistics, alt.journalism.criticism
XPost: sac.politics, talk.politics.misc

Abortion has become slightly more common despite bans or deep restrictions
in most Republican-controlled states, and the legal and political fights
over its future are not over yet.

It’s now been two and a half years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned
Roe v. Wade and opened the door for states to implement bans.

The policies and their impact have been in flux ever since the ruling in
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Here’s a look at data on where things stand:

Abortions are slightly more common now than before Dobbs

Overturning Roe and enforcing abortion bans has changed how woman obtain abortions in the U.S.

But one thing it hasn’t done is put a dent in the number of abortions
being obtained.

There have been slightly more monthly abortions across the country
recently than there were in the months leading up to the June 2022 ruling,
even as the number in states with bans dropped to near zero.

“Abortion bans don’t actually prevent abortions from happening,” said
Ushma Upadhyay, a public health social scientist at the University of California San Francisco.

But, she said, they do change care.

For women in some states, there are major obstacles to getting abortions —
and advocates say that low-income, minority and immigrant women are least likely to be able to get them when they want.

For those living in states with bans, the ways to access abortion are
through travel or abortion pills.

Pills become a bigger part of equation — and the legal questions
As the bans swept in, abortion pills became a bigger part of the equation.

They were involved in about half the abortions before Dobbs. More
recently, it’s been closer to two-thirds of them, according to research by
the Guttmacher Institute.

The uptick of that kind of abortion, usually involving a combination of
two drugs, was underway before the ruling.

But now, it’s become more common for pill prescriptions to be made by telehealth. By the summer of 2024, about 1 in 10 abortions was via pills prescribed via telehealth to patients in states where abortion is banned.

As a result, the pills are now at the center of battles over abortion
access.

This month, Texas sued a New York doctor for prescribing pills to a Texas
woman via telemedicine. There’s also an effort by Idaho, Kansas and
Missouri to roll back their federal approvals and treat them as
“controlled dangerous substances,” and a push for the federal government
to start enforcing a 19th-century federal law to ban mailing them.

Travel for abortion has increased

Clinics have closed or halted abortions in states with bans.

But a network of efforts to get women seeking abortions to places where
they’re legal has strengthened and travel for abortion is now common.

The Guttmacher Institute found that more than twice as many Texas
residents obtained abortion in 2023 in New Mexico as New Mexico residents
did. And as many Texans received them in Kansas as Kansans.

Abortion funds, which benefitted from “rage giving” in 2022, have helped
pay the costs for many abortion-seekers. But some funds have had to cap
how much they can give.

The abortion map has been in flux
Since the downfall of Roe, the actions of lawmakers and courts have kept shifting where abortion is legal and under what conditions.

Here’s where it stands now:

The ban that took eff
ect in Florida this year has been a game-changer
Florida, the nation’s third most-populous state, began enforcing a ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy on May 1.

That immediately changed the state from one that was a refuge for other Southerners seeking abortion to an exporter of people looking for them.

There were about 30% fewer abortions there in May compared with the
average for the first three months of the year. And in June, there were
35% fewer.

While the ban is not unique, the impact is especially large. The average driving time from Florida to a facility in North Carolina where abortion
is available for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is more than nine hours, according to data maintained by Caitlin Myers, a Middlebury College
economics professor.

Clinics have opened or expanded in some places
The bans have meant clinics closed or stopped offering abortions in some states.

But some states where abortion remains legal until viability – generally considered to be sometime past 21 weeks of pregnancy, though there’s no
fixed time for it – have seen clinics open and expand.

Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico are among the states with new clinics.

There were 799 publicly identifiable abortion providers in the U.S. in May 2022, the month before the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. And by this November, it was 792, according to a tally by Myers, who is collecting
data on abortion providers.

But Myers says some hospitals that always provided some abortions have
begun advertising it. So they’re now in the count of clinics – even though
they might provide few of them.

Lack of access to abortions during emergencies is threatening some
patients’ lives

How hospitals handle pregnancy complications, especially those that
threaten the lives of the women, has emerged as a major issue since Roe
was overturned.

President Joe Biden’s administration says hospitals must offer abortions
when they’re needed to prevent organ loss, hemorrhage or deadly
infections, even in states with bans. Texas is challenging the
administration’s policy and the U.S. Supreme Court this year declined to
take it up after the Biden administration sued Idaho.

More than 100 pregnant women seeking help in emergency rooms and were
turned away or left unstable since 2022, The Associated Press found in an analysis of federal hospital investigative records.

Among the complaints were a woman who miscarried in the lobby restroom of
Texas emergency room after staff refused to see her and a woman who gave
birth in a car after a North Carolina hospital couldn’t offer an
ultrasound. The baby later died.

“It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in
an emergency department,” Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and
former U.S. Health and Human Services official told the AP earlier this
year.

Abortion rights are popular with voters
Since Roe was overturned, there have been 18 reproductive rights-related statewide ballot questions.

Abortion rights advocates have prevailed on 14 of them and lost on four.

In the 2024 election, they amended the constitutions in five states to add
the right to abortion. Such measures failed in three states: In Florida,
where it required 60% support; in Nebraska, which had competing abortion
ballot measures; and in South Dakota, where most national abortion rights groups did support the measure.

Most abortion rights ballot measures passed in 2024
Voters approved most state ballot initiatives protecting abortion rights,
but rejected measures in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Reproductive rights ballot measures

AP VoteCast data found that more than three-fifths of voters in 2024
supported abortion being legal in all or most cases – a slight uptick from 2020. The support came even as voters supported Republicans to control the White House and both houses of Congress.

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-roe-dobbs-states-data- 5632f60aa1d797bcdec9fbc77a385413

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