by Rob Moore, Ohio Capital Journal
November 2, 2023
Tomorrow, Ohio voters will go to the polls to vote to establish a state constitutional right for residents to make reproductive decisions about abortion, contraception, and miscarriage care.
In the wake of the decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn the court’s previous opinion of a federal constitutional right to abortion, state legislatures across the country have moved to ban or severely limit abortion.
Ohio currently borders three states with total bans on abortion: Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Abortion is currently legal in Ohio due to a judicial order to freeze a 2019 law that would ban abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy.
A group of economists led by Middlebury College’s Caitlin Myers have studied the impact bans have and will have on access to abortion in the United States.
Currently, the average drive time to an abortion facility in Ohio is around 36 minutes. This estimate is nearly identical to the 34 minutes researchers at health research firm Altarum estimated Americans typically drive to the doctor’s office.
Because of clinics in Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Toledo, people living in those metropolitan areas can generally reach a clinic that provides abortion in under an hour.
