Hundreds of thousands of Americans traveled for last year in the wake of the overturning Roe v. Wade. More than 171,000 women – either to obtain abortion pills or have a procedure – outside of their own states, according to new estimates from the Guttmacher Institute.
The figure constitutes more than double of the out-of-state abortions in 2019. More than one million abortions took place in states which didn’t have a total ban last year, the first full year after America’s top court rescinded the nationwide . It marks the highest number of procedures in a decade.
On 24 June, 2022, 1973 Roe v Wade ruling which had granted women the right to an abortion up until the point of fetal viability – about 24 weeks – was overturned by the Supreme Court. At least 14 states have banned abortions since the ruling. Donald Trump, who appointed three of the justices, bragged that “we broke Roe v Wade,” in April this year.
The new data comes days after the Supreme Court unanimously , mifepristone, allowing the pills to remain available to patients traveling from states with bans. Use of medication is now the most common method of terminating a pregnancy in the US accounting for approximately 63% of abortions. While those who traveled went to a neighboring state for an abortion, those in the south had to travel further afield with 13 states prohibiting or fully banning the procedure.
Florida and Illinois – that border states with strict abortion limits – saw swathes of wome.
