Republican abortion bans have forced dozens of clinic closures

Laura Clawson

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday October 06, 2022 · 11:21 AM PDT

2022/10/06 · 11:21

NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 02: Crowds gather in Foley Square for the Women's March on October 2, 2021 in New York City. The Women's March and other groups organized marches across the country to protest the new abortion law in Texas. (Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images)

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It’s been just over 100 days since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, and it’s having a massive impact, a new report from the Guttmacher Institute makes clear. In that time, 66 clinics in 15 states have stopped offering abortions, with 26 having shut down entirely. Those bans and closures now affect 29% of the women of reproductive age in the United States—nearly 22 million women (and, let’s be clear, girls), plus an unknown number of people who do not identify as women but could become pregnant.

Prior to Dobbs, there were 79 clinics offering abortions across these 15 states, and the 13 that continue to do so are all in one state, Georgia. These abortion bans and clinic closures will affect huge numbers of people: In 2020, there were 125,780 abortions in the 14 states that now have no clinics open, and another 41,620 in Georgia, where a six-week ban means that by the time many people discover they’re pregnant, they will not be able to obtain an abortion in their home state.

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Thirteen of the states ban all abortions but for extremely narrow exceptions: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. Georgia has a six-week ban in place. In Wisconsin, clinics have closed thanks to uncertainty around whether the state’s pre-Roe v. Wade ban will be enforced.

These aren’t the only states where abortion access is endangered. Indiana, Ohio, and South Carolina had harsh bans go into effect before being blocked by the courts, but those blocks are temporary and could fall.

“Even before Roe was overturned, getting an abortion was difficult or outright impossible for many people, especially those who were already facing steep barriers to accessing health care, including people with low incomes, Black and Brown people, immigrants, young people, those with disabilities and rural populations,” the Guttmacher Institute’s Rachel Jones said in a statement. “These inequities are likely to worsen as clinic-based abortion care disappears in many states, many of them clustered in regions like the South.”

And when clinics close, it’s not just abortion access that’s lost. If clinics don’t stay open to offer other services, communities lose important sources of reproductive health care, from birth control to annual exams to screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and much more. In Louisiana, three clinics closed entirely. Oklahoma and Tennessee lost two apiece. Twelve clinics closed entirely in Texas. Every one of those is a loss for many people who may never need an abortion but struggle with access to health care.

You can’t even say this is mission accomplished for Republicans, because their plans are so much bigger.

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Republican abortion bans have forced dozens of clinic closures

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