The newly conservative-majority Supreme Court could put abortion rights further in jeopardy, according to the authors of a new study in the journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy.
11% of women in Louisiana, a state with just a handful abortion clinics, attempted to induce their own abortions between June 2015 and June 2017.
Researchers Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a reproductive health research group based at the University of California, San Francisco, compared abortion laws in Louisiana and Maryland and found state restrictions have a larger effect on women than initially thought. When women cannot access abortion they are more likely to take their own measures, the study concluded. Some 11% of women in Louisiana attempted to induce their own abortions between June 2015 and June 2017.
“This study emphasizes the distinction between legal abortion and accessible abortion,” Sarah Roberts, associate professor at ANSIRH and lead author of the study, said. “Even in an environment where Roe v. Wade remains intact, policy barriers can play a major role in preventing women from accessing abortion care.”
Abortion is already inaccessible for many Americans, the study shows. There are 27 “abortion deserts” in the U.S. — cities where women must travel more than 100 miles for the procedure. Since 2010, 338 new abortion restrictions have been passed in the U.S., including 50 enacted across 18 states in 2016 alone. In the U.S., 87% of counties have no abortion provider at all, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Only three abortion clinics remain in Louisiana, leaving 92% of Louisiana counties with no clinics that provide abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a Washington, D.C. reproductive-rights think tank. A woman seeking abortion in Louisiana may be up to 10 times more likely to experience a policy-related reason for not having an abortion as low-income women who consider abortion in Maryland, which had 25 clinics as of 2014.
Proponents of regulations restricting abortion clinics say they want to protect the life of the unborn child, but they also say they’re protecting women’s health.
Activists blame restrictive laws for the small number of abortion clinics. In Louisiana, a woman seeking an abortion must receive state-directed counseling and then wait 24 hours before a procedure is provided, requiring two trips to the clinic. She must undergo an ultrasound before obtaining an abortion during which the provider must show and describe the image to the woman. Public funding is available for abortion only in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest.
Proponents of regulations restricting abortion clinics say they want to protect the life of the unborn child, but they also say they’re protecting women’s health. Pro-choice advocates say the latter point is something of a Catch 22: In some states, abortion clinics must obtain transfer agreements from nearby hospitals in the event of an emergency during the procedure, but some hospitals don’t (or won’t) give those approvals. Because hospitals won’t approve the transfer of a patient in an emergency, the state may not give a license to an abortion clinic in a particular area.
Six states require each abortion facility to have an agreement with a local hospital in order to transfer patients in the event complications arise.
Six states require each abortion facility to have an agreement with a local hospital in order to transfer patients in the event complications arise and 21 states require a provider to have some kind of relationship with a local hospital, according to the reproductive health research tank Guttmacher Institute. Louisiana is one of those states that requires doctors who perform abortions to have “admitting privileges” to send women to a nearby hospital in case of complications.
The average cost of an abortion is $508, according to the Guttmacher Institute, but the cost is continually increased by restrictions. Laws that require a consultation and waiting period before an abortion increase the cost of the procedure by an average of $107, a 2015 study by California State University, Long Beach found. That same study showed an additional 25 physicians per 100,000 residents can decrease the cost of abortion by $78.
Women’s rights advocates fear more restrictive measures
Women’s rights advocates have expressed concern that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision making abortion legal at a federal level, could be — if not overturned — then eroded by individual states following the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, who was nominated for a seat on the highest court in the land by President Trump.
“The new shift in the balance of the Supreme Court, which is likely to lead to more and harsher state-level abortion laws, may also result in a widening disparity between these outcomes for women in states with severe restrictions and states without them, even if abortion remains technically legal nationwide,” she said.
Women who want to abort pregnancies, but are unable to do so, are significantly more likely to experience poverty, a study published in the January 2018 edition of the American Journal of Public Health found. In fact, being unable to financially support a child is the number one reason cited for seeking an abortion. Some 60% of women seeking abortions do so because they are already mothers and cannot afford another child, a previous ANSIRH study showed.
Get a daily roundup of the top reads in personal finance delivered to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Personal Finance Daily newsletter. Sign up here.
