THURSDAY, July 18, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, even more women have struggled to find reproductive care, a new report warns. Issued Thursday by the Commonwealth Fund, the shows that women living in states long plagued by health disparities -- particularly in the Southeast -- have been harmed the most.
And it isn't just about being able to afford care: women in these areas are less likely to be able to even find an ob/gyn in their area. Some of the statistics were particularly grim: In 2022, women living in more than one-third of U.S.
counties had little or no access to maternity care. “Women’s health is in a very fragile place,” lead report author said during a Wednesday media briefing, reported. “Our health system is failing women of reproductive age, especially women of color and low-income women.
” Those inequities are not new, Commonwealth Fund President noted during the briefing, “but recent policy choices and judicial decisions restricting access to reproductive care have and may continue to exacerbate them.” The report weighed a dozen measures of women’s health care, including maternal mortality, preterm birth and postpartum depression, in all 50 states in 2022, the year the Dobbs ruling was issued. That ruling “significantly altered both access to reproductive health care services and how providers are able to treat pregnancy complications in the 21 states that ban or restrict abortion acc.
