Charted: Abortion travel distances, two years after Dobbs
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State abortion bans enacted in the two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned have left residents of nearly a quarter of U.S. counties having to travel more than 200 miles to find an abortion provider, according to a Middlebury College tracker.
Why it matters: The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision left a patchwork of abortion access that poses heightened logistical and financial challenges for patients seeking care in clinics, many of whom come from areas with lower incomes and more diverse populations.
- More than 171,000 patients traveled out of state for abortions last year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.
By the numbers: As of this month, residents in 712 (22.7%) counties had to travel more than 200 miles in order to access the procedure, per the Myers Abortion Facility Database, which is maintained at Middlebury College.
- That's a more than threefold jump over June 2021, when residents in 216 (6.9%) counties had to travel the same distance.
- Even before the Supreme Court struck down Roe, big segments of the U.S. — particularly in the central part of the country — had no provider options within a 250-mile drive.
- Since then, half of the states have imposed restrictions of some kind on the procedure, prompting clinic closings and more service cutbacks.
- The geographic gaps help explain why abortion pills that are available by mail have become a major focus of the legal and political battles over reproductive health.
Between the lines: This data focuses on one metric — the distance to the nearest provider — and may understate the difficulty of accessing the procedure in states like Florida, Georgia and South Carolina that implemented six-week bans in the past year.
- The data also does not reflect the uncertainty in states where bans have been in flux, such as Arizona, where a near-total ban may be enforced until Sept. 26.
What's next: The Supreme Court could rule as soon as this week in a case over whether a federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency care overrides Idaho's near-total abortion ban.
- Abortion rights ballot measures will feature prominently this fall in battleground states likely to decide the presidential election and test how much backlash there is to the state abortion restrictions.
