Undue Burden

Here’s what Texas’s anti-abortion statute forces women to do:

While three-hour road trips are often the stuff of impromptu weekend getaways, in Texas they’ve now become a requirement for a large swath of women seeking to access basic healthcare. A new study shows that the passage of a prohibitive state law has dramatically increased travel distances and the need for overnight stays to obtain an abortion.

We already knew that half of the state’s abortion clinics shuttered following the introduction in 2013 of House Bill 2 (HB2), which instituted strict and prohibitive requirements for abortion facilities. Now, a new research paper published in the American Journal of Public Health literally maps out the impact of those closures. Among women whose nearest clinic shutdown after HB2, the average distance to the nearest provider increased fourfold.

Researchers from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) analyzed surveys from nearly 400 women seeking abortions in Texas. They found that among the 38 percent of women whose nearest clinic closed following HB2, the average one-way distance to the closest abortion clinic was now 70 miles. Compare that to their average one-way distance to the nearest provider before the law passed: 17 miles. That’s just the average increased burden. It’s much worse for many who had their closest clinic close: 25 percent live more than 139 miles away from a provider and 10 percent are more than 256 miles away. That’s easily in excess of anywhere from four to nine hours in the car roundtrip.

The health benefits of these onerous restrictions are “none.” The law must be struck down.