Travel times for abortions have tripled and overseas sales of abortion pills have skyrocketed since Roe v. Wade was lifted.
The human implications of June’s landmark decision were laid bare in more than a dozen analyzes and reports released Tuesday.
They were released just a week before the midterm elections, which some expect abortion rights will be a key issue.
One of the newly published studies estimates that it now takes an average of about 100 minutes to get to an abortion clinic, compared to just 30 minutes last year.
A second report showed that orders for abortion pills abroad have surged, particularly in states like Louisiana and Arkansas, where the surgery has been banned.
A third study suggested that depression and domestic violence could increase as a result of unwanted pregnancies.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, 13 states have banned abortion, while five others have restricted the procedure.
This map shows the estimated travel times to abortion clinics in the US in the past year before abortion restrictions were put in place
The above shows the estimated travel time to the abortion clinics after Roe v. Wade has been knocked down across America, increasing to about 100 minutes on average. The 18 highlighted states have restricted or banned abortion altogether
There were 79,620 abortions in August, down 6 percent from April.
Abortions fell to nearly zero in states that banned or restricted them during that period, but rose by nearly 5,000 in those that still allowed the procedure.
Many mothers have come forward with horror stories of being denied medical care due to the strict rules.
Missouri hospital under investigation for ‘denying medical abortion’
A Missouri hospital is under investigation after refusing to give an abortion to a woman whose water ruptured early.
Freeman Hospital West in Joplin, southwest Missouri, is accused of sending the woman away in late October.
At the end of October she had to travel to another state.
Full details of the case, which is being investigated by federal authorities, have yet to be released.
A total of 13 US states have enacted an absolute ban on abortion.
But in July, the Biden administration reminded hospitals that federal law required them to continue giving them in life- or health-saving emergencies.
The evaluation is conducted under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, which supersedes state law.
Among the situations in which it comes into effect is a woman’s premature rupture of membranes, which can lead to serious infections and endanger the life of the mother.
Just yesterday, the federal government launched its first investigation into a woman who was refused medical abortion.
Freeman Hospital West in Joplin, Missouri, has come under fire after a hospital refused to terminate a pregnancy in a woman whose waters ruptured early.
She eventually sought medical help out of state.
The Biden administration has reminded providers in states that ban abortion that federal law requires them to provide it for life or health-related emergencies.
Abortion has now been banned in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The procedure is restricted in Arizona, Florida and Georgia.
In one of the most recent studies published in the JAMA Network Open, researchers modeled the average travel time to an abortion clinic in the contiguous United States.
The analysis of travel times was conducted when 749 clinics were open last year and compared to 671 still operating after June this year.
In 2021, researchers estimated that the journey to each clinic took about 30 minutes on average.
But by September of this year, models suggested the time had increased – or tripled – to an average of around an hour and 30 minutes by the time the bans came into effect.
They also estimated that the proportion of women living more than an hour from a clinic has doubled from 14 percent to over 33 percent.
Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts warned that travel times in America to Roe are “significantly longer”.
In a second study, scientists looked at anonymized data from Aid Access, a doctor-run telehealth service based in Europe that prescribes abortion pills by mail.
The company said it has seen a surge in requests for self-administered abortions.
The service received around 214 requests daily from June to August, compared to 83 from September 2021 to May 2022.
Prescriptions rose 254 percent in Mississippi — the largest increase of any state surveyed — followed by Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma.
Louisiana was the state with the highest number of abortion pill prescriptions at 14.9 pills per 100,000 women — a 166 percent increase since the Roe v. Calf.
The above shows how abortion pill prescriptions per capita have increased in states that have banned them
This shows how abortion pill prescription rates have increased in states where they have been limited
University of Texas, Austin researchers who led the study found that most women requested the pills because of current state restrictions.
In some cases, women who were not pregnant ordered them to be kept for emergencies.
dr Abigail Aiken, a global health expert who led the paper, and others wrote: “After Dobbs, requests for self-administered abortion through online telemedicine increased.
“The biggest increases have been in states that have implemented outright bans, with applicants often citing those bans as their motivation for accessing the service.”
Abortion is restricted or outlawed in states, mostly concentrated in the southern United States
A third meta-analysis looked at 524,000 women who had intended and unintended pregnancies.
It found that women who had conceived without having children were 59 percent more likely to have depression during pregnancy and 51 percent more likely to have it after childbirth.
There was also a 21 percent higher risk of preterm birth in the group and a nine percent higher risk of having a low-birth-weight baby.
Kaiser Permanente Health System researchers said in the study that unwanted pregnancy was “significantly associated with adverse outcomes for both mother and child.”
Another study warned of the health risks for women ages 10 to 13 who become pregnant and do not have access to abortions.
From January 2019 to May 2021, scientists searched the Premier Healthcare Database, which covers 25 percent of births in America.
The mothers were grouped by age from 10 to 13 years and then each year until age 19.
Of the 90,876 births included in the study, 206 births were to girls aged 10 to 13 years.
The youngest age group had the highest risk of preterm birth, cesarean section, and preeclampsia in the group.
They are most likely to suffer a stillbirth or need to be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU).