CNN
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25 hours In February 2024, Gracie Rudd and her husband sat silently as they were driving from their home in southern Wisconsin to Chicago. Their spirit was as cold and grey as Midwest winters passed by car windows. At 20 weeks pregnant, Rudd recently learned that a severe fetal condition has made his developing baby “incompatible with life”. If you continue to get pregnant, you can put your health at risk.
However, abortion was not an option in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, a state law 175 years ago effectively banned the procedures at the time. The law has since been overturned, but Rudd, her family and her doctors were stuck in a legal gray area that raised fear and worry. And instead of being surrounded by familiar comforts at one of the most miserable points of her life, Rudd had to take a break from work, coordinate childcare for her 2-year-old son, and travel more than 100 miles from home to a healthcare provider she had never met before.
“The moment it was all going on… I was more focused on getting through that grief, but I was sitting with the things that happened after a few months and I could handle it, so I was just really mad,” Rudd said. “Is it Acine that my healthcare provider can say, ‘Yes, this is what you need. This is the best option for you, but we can’t do that. We have to go here because the hospital is uncomfortable for the legal reasons that provide this procedure.” ”
Instead, Rudd lay uncomfortably in the back seat of his car, returning home, feeling nauseous and painful. Last year, it was a trip made by tens of thousands of others, and it was often made for even longer periods, sometimes by itself.
More than one in seven people who had abortions in the United States last year do so to do so to do so to do so to do so to do so to do so to do so to do so, according to a new estimate from the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization focusing on sexual and reproductive health that supports abortion rights. This pattern highlights the lasting impact of the US Supreme Court’s DOBBS decision. This revoked the federal rights to abortion and created a landscape of broken care.
According to new Guttmacher estimates, in 2024, around 155,000 people traveled out of state for abortions. More than twice as many as 2019.
Almost half of those who traveled for abortion last year came from 12 states that have enacted a total ban, including more than 28,000 Texas residents who left the state last year due to an abortion.
Most often, Texas residents travelled to nearby New Mexico. Kansas and Colorado welcomed thousands of Texas residents for abortion last year.
For some Texans, reaching neighboring states requires a day’s trip. However, in some parts of the country, particularly the southeastern, abortion care options require people to travel through multiple states.
A year and a half after the DOBBS decision, Florida has become an important access point for abortion care. In 2023, more than 9,000 people traveled from other states to get an abortion in Florida, according to data from Guttmacher. At the time, Florida had abortions of one twelve of the country and about one south and three south abortions.
However, in May 2024, a six-week ban was enacted in Florida. Before we knew that most women were pregnant, we limited abortion to points. According to Guttmacher data, the number of people who traveled to Florida for abortion last year has been cut by half. And last year, nearly 8,000 people left Florida to get an abortion in another state, often crossing at least three states for care.
Despite restrictions imposed by North Carolina law (12-week pregnancy limit and 72-hour waiting period), the big gap created by Florida’s new, even more stringent restrictions has driven a significant increase in travel from Florida to North Carolina for abortion care. Floridians traveled further north for abortion care. In 2024, about 10 times more people traveled from Florida to Virginia than in 2023, and over 2,000 people traveled to New York last year.
“We’ve seen a lot of effort into making it easier to understand,” said Isaac Maddow-Zimet, data scientist at Guttmacher. “The decisions people are making about where they can travel is very complicated, especially in terms of travel patterns, and are affected by a network of restrictions that people have to navigate, especially in the southeast.”
Illinois remains a key access point for people traveling for abortions nationwide. More than a fifth of people who traveled for abortion last year went to Illinois, new Guttmacher data shows. The state aborted more than 35,000 out-of-state residents than any other state due to abortion in 2024.
Experts say Illinois stakeholders have made their stance on abortion rights clear.
“We’re not just about advocacy, we’re not just going through good laws. We’re investing directly in life-saving abortion funds. This saves lives. It has immediate impact. We take it up and down the state, taking it very seriously.”
Illinois’ investment in abortion care means many appointments are available, including opening clinics, expanding opening hours and increasing number of providers.
“Another week makes a big difference when you’re pregnant and don’t want to be,” Jeyifo said. “The conditions we create here in Illinois will be made available to everyone, not just people of the means.”
Choices Center for Reproductive Health opened a new clinic in southern Illinois in late 2023, with the majority of patients seen there (about 90%) coming from other states, said President and CEO Jennifer Pepper.
“I pull into the car park and look at license plates in Texas and Louisiana and Tennessee so I know these patients have traveled at least four hours,” Pepper said. “If they can go down the street to a regular OB/Gyn, they could come and go within an hour. For a lot of people who care for their children, teach, nurses and care for our community, that’s when I saw patients.”
The clinic’s policy is to see patients reaching the door.
“We don’t drive people away because of abortion even if we’re four hours late, because it’s the care they need. They went through a lot and they traveled far to access it. “The cars break down, the tires flatten, they get caught in traffic, the kids have to eat, the babysitters appear late. All of this is what happens, and there needs to be a lot of compassion and flexibility.”
Clinics are mostly flexible as they are not overbooked with schedules. Pepper says that in part it may be due to an increase in telehealth use to access drug abortion, including those accessed through the Shield Act by individuals living in states with no abortions.
Another new report published Monday by the Family Planning Association found that one in quarter of 2024 was provided through Telehealth, with one in five in 2023 to one in 20 in 2022.
At the end of 2024, an average of 12,330 abortions were offered each month under the Shield Act, an increase of around 40% since the start of the year.
“Millions of people live in states where abortions are banned or restricted, and travelling for care is not an option for anyone,” said Dr. Angel Foster, co-founder of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project (MAP), a Shield Act practice. “By providing safe and affordable medication abortion via telehealth, we are ensuring that people get the care they need, no matter where they live or what they can do.”
Overall, Guttmacher’s data shows that the number of people traveling for abortions has been slightly soaked. About 9% fewer people than last year’s abortion, a difference of about 15,000 people compared to 2023.
Access to Telehealth abortions is on the rise, but there will be less funding for those who want or need to travel.
The option once managed to cover 100% of the abortion costs for patients in need, but now it has fallen below 50%, Pepper said. And in mid-2024, the Chicago Abortion Fund had to halt its support to people traveling to states outside of Illinois, Jayifou said it was at stake in the state’s ability to absorb an increased need for appointments.
“Telehealth has become an important tool for people in banned states, especially in expanding abortion care,” said Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, co-chair of the #Wecount Project of the University of California Family Planning Association and co-chair of the #Wecount Project, advancing the new standards of reproduction in San Francisco. “However, this access is not guaranteed. Abortion-preventing extremists are using junk science and are currently trying to dismantle the lifelines of people in the banned states by turning attacks into telehealth and trying to roll back access.”
