All that is in defiance of surrounding states that have banned abortion or severely restricted it since Roe v. Wade was overturned June 24, upending a nationwide system of easy access to the procedure. Currently, 12 states have a near-total ban on the procedure; another four have bans at six, 15, 18 or 20 weeks of pregnancy; nine states have pending bans that are being challenged in the courts; another nine states allow abortion with various limits, and 16 states plus the District of Columbia have laws protecting abortion access.
This checkerboard of access has created lengthy car journeys for women having to sometimes traverse several states in search of an abortion, as well as a brisk business for moving vans helping clinics in states where abortion is banned or severely limited relocate hundreds of miles away.
Some critics have labeled this the new “abortion tourism,” creating regional abortion outposts next to states where the procedure has been outlawe”We have seen a lot of Texas license plates at the abortion centers in New Mexico – women driving 16 hours from Dallas, Houston and San Antonio,” said Mark Cavaliere, CEO of the Southwest Coalition for Life in Las Cruces.
After the September 2021 passage of the Texas Hearbeat Act – which limits abortions to around the first six weeks of pregnancy – the overall number of abortions performed in New Mexico tripled, he said, with out-of-state women as the recipients of three out of every four abortions.In 2020, there were 930,150 abortions in the United States, an uptick from 916,460 in 2019, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, an independent organization that was formerly part of Planned Parenthood. Abortion clinic operators who’ve relocated rather than go out of business want to make sure that abortion access remains open.Among the several clinics that have opened in Las Cruces is the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi clinic at the center of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned Roe. After Mississippi passed a law in 2018 banning abortion after 15 weeks, the clinic challenged the law’s constitutionality in court. This past June, the Supreme Court ruled there is no constitutional right to an abortion.
Source: Newsweek
