New Abortion Clinics Are Opening Near Borders and Airports to Stretch Access as Far as It Will Go
Many people already have to travel to get an abortion, due to state-level restrictions and dwindling numbers of clinics.
In 2017, 74% of abortion patients in Wyoming, 57% in South Carolina, and 56% in Missouri left their home state to get care, one study found.
But if the Supreme Court’s draft decision is similar to the final one, that inconvenience is about to affect a lot more people. Across swaths of the South, Midwest, and Southwest, people would have to travel out of state or find a way to access abortion pills if they needed to end a pregnancy. Clinics in “abortion islands” like Illinois—states with strong abortion protections in place, but surrounded by those likely to ban it—are already bracing for a post-Roe onslaught of new patients.
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The cost of an abortion, either through pills or a procedure, can range from hundreds of dollars to more than $1,000. If someone also has to travel for that care, they must shoulder the financial and logistical costs of transportation, lodging, missed work, and child care. Local abortion funds have long provided practical support like money for travel and assistance finding child care. (At Partners in Abortion Care, a local investor is considering buying an apartment near the clinic to use as an “abortion Airbnb,” Nuzzo says, where people could stay for free before and after their procedures.)
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Jennifer Pepper, executive director at CHOICES Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, is also planning to open a clinic in a new state if and when hers is forced to stop offering abortion care. (Tennessee has a “trigger law” in place, which would ban most abortions within a month of Roe being overturned.) She and her team found a space in Carbondale, a city in southern Illinois about a two-hour drive from St. Louis and a three-hour drive from both Memphis and Nashville. They’re preparing to open in August.
CHOICES provided 3,900 abortions in its Memphis clinic last year and expects to exceed that number in Illinois. But they can’t serve everyone. If Roe is overturned, multiple Tennessee clinics would have to stop offering abortion services, and there’s no way CHOICES could absorb all of those patients with one new facility. “It’s just a math problem that doesn’t work out,” Pepper says. Modeling that Myers conducted for TIME suggests the Carbondale facility could reduce travel requirements for about 3 million women, mostly in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
Other advocates are eyeing Illinois, too. Dr. Douglas Laube, an abortion provider in Wisconsin, told local news outlets that he is thinking of opening a new clinic just over the state border. Planned Parenthood is also expanding operations in Illinois, as the Washington Post has reported.
https://time.com/6185519/abortion-clinics-travel-state-borders/
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