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Nearly one in five US women who got abortions in the first half of 2023 had to travel to other states to obtain care, statistics show.
The statistic doubled from where it stood in 2020, when one in 10 women had to travel across state lines, according to newly released data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that advocates for abortion rights.
The spike in interstate travel for abortion care is alarming yet predictable following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year.
"We knew that more people have been traveling across state lines for abortion since the end of Roe, but these findings are stunning nonetheless, and powerfully illustrate just how disruptive the overturning of Roe has been for tens of thousands of abortion patients," Isaac Maddow-Zimet, Guttmacher's project lead and data scientist on the report, said in a press release.
Spikes have been especially noticeable in abortion-friendly states that border with states that have abortion bans or strict gestational limits, according to Guttmacher's data.
One such example is New Mexico, which has seen an influx of patients from Texas and Oklahoma, where abortion bans make the procedure nearly impossible with few, strictly monitored exceptions.
Some 74% of abortion patients served in New Mexico came from other states, per Guttmacher data.
Abortions increased in New Mexico by 279% during the examined period from 2020 to 2023, amounting to an additional 8,200 abortions, the data showed.
Florida, Illinois, Kansas, and North Carolina also saw spikes in out-of-state patients obtaining abortions, Guttmacher's analysis found.
