Simply over 100 days have handed because the Supreme Court docket repealed 1973′s Roe v. Wade ruling, and the devastating results of the landmark determination are already on full show.
Following the judgment in Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being Group from late June, 66 abortion clinics throughout 15 states have been compelled to cease providing abortion companies, in keeping with an evaluation launched by the Guttmacher Institute on Thursday.
Twenty-six of these clinics have been compelled to close down utterly, whereas the remaining 40 are nonetheless open however simply providing different sexual and reproductive well being companies. The evaluation from Guttmacher, a analysis group that helps abortion rights, centered on the states that have been implementing both complete or six-week abortion bans as of Sunday.
Clustered primarily within the Southeast, these 15 states embody Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Alabama. Fourteen of them don’t have any abortion clinics resulting from near-total abortion bans that got here into impact after Roe fell. The fifteenth state is Georgia, which nonetheless presents abortion care in 13 of its clinics, however companies are closely restricted because the enactment of a six-week ban in July.
“That is solely 100 days in from Roe being overturned, and we have already got 14 states the place there isn’t a abortion supplier,” stated Rachel Jones, a principal analysis scientist at Guttmacher and the lead writer on its new report. The nonprofit estimates that 26 states will doubtless ban abortion inside a yr of the Dobbs determination.
Texas, due to its sheer measurement, had essentially the most clinics earlier than the June ruling. There have been 23 abortion clinics within the Lone Star State, however none at present presents abortion companies. Twelve of the Texas clinics have shut their doorways for good, whereas 11 proceed to supply different companies.
Arizona beforehand had eight abortion clinics, none of which now presents abortion care. Seven of those clinics stay open and supply different well being companies.
Louisiana was residence to a few abortion clinics earlier than the Dobbs determination, which centered on a clinic nicknamed the Pink Home. All of them have since been compelled to close down utterly.
Almost 22 million ladies of reproductive age dwell within the 15 states analyzed by Guttmacher. That’s nearly one-third of all the U.S. inhabitants of ladies of childbearing age who at the moment are going through bans or extreme restrictions on abortion. And this quantity doesn’t embody nonbinary and transgender individuals who can get pregnant.
The demand for abortion care has elevated in recent times, in keeping with a separate report from Guttmacher that got here out days earlier than the Dobbs determination. After a long time of decline, the variety of abortions being carried out saw an 8% improve between 2017 and 2020.
“These bans on abortion are coming at a time when the necessity is even larger than it has been,” stated Jones.
Some states — like Ohio and Indiana — are nonetheless battling abortion bans in decrease courts, forcing clinics to supply abortion care in the future however not the following. And that’s merely not sustainable for services which might be typically already underfunded and understaffed.
“On this whack-a-mole world that we’re dwelling in ― the place abortion bans are in place after which usually are not in place after which are in place ― that’s not a practical surroundings for clinics,” stated Jones. “They will’t maintain accommodating these modifications and legal guidelines. It takes its toll.”