Michael Keller and Allison Yarrow mapped the country’s abortion clinics and the distance women in different locations would need to travel to visit one:
The clearest trend on the map is the dearth of clinics through the center of the country—from northern Texas through Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, and North Dakota. Roughly 400,000 women of reproductive age (between 15 and 44) live more than 150 miles from the closest clinic in this region. The county farthest away from an abortion clinic is Divide, N.D. All of these states except Wyoming require 24-hour waiting periods between the time a woman schedules an abortion and the procedure.
Interactive version of the map here.
On the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the ability of women in some midwestern states to receive abortions is less a contested legal issue than one of simple access.
Federal judge temporarily blocks restrictive new Mississippi abortion law: A preliminary ruling by U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III will prevent the law from taking effect at least until July 11, in what pro-abortion-rights activists label a victory. The law would likely lead to the closing of the state’s only abortion clinic. Read more here.
The law requires anyone performing abortions at the state’s only clinic to be an OB-GYN with privileges to admit patients to a local hospital. Such privileges can be difficult to obtain, and the clinic contends the mandate is designed to put it out of business. A clinic spokeswoman, Betty Thompson, has said the two physicians who do abortions there are OB-GYNs who travel from other states.
Michelle Movahed of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights is one of the attorneys representing the Mississippi clinic in its federal lawsuit. She said in an interview Friday that several states — including Mississippi, Kansas and Oklahoma — have tried in the past two or three years to chip away at access to abortion.
“One of the things that has really been surprising about Mississippi is how open the legislators and elected officials have been about their intentions,” Movahed said. “They’re not even pretending it’s about public safety. They’re openly saying they’re using this law to try to shut down the last abortion provider in the state.”
The state’s governor, Republican Phil Bryant, says that this is the intended effect, as he wants the state to be “abortion-free.” There is only one abortion clinic in the entire state.
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
