map of average distance to abortion clinic
By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 9 years ago

Map of the Day: The average distance to the nearest abortion clinic in every county

In the New York Times, Kim Soffen explores how Texas’s abortion restrictions in the last few years have increased the distance to the nearest abortion clinic — and, if they’re declared constitutional by the Supreme Court, will likely serve as the template for gutting abortion access across the country. 

map of average distance to abortion clinic

With 17 clinics for the whole state, down from 42 in 2012, “the average Texas county is now 111 miles from the nearest clinic, up from 72 miles in 2012. This is substantially higher than the national average outside Texas, 59 miles, and more than triple the average in deep red South Carolina, 36 miles.” And if SCOTUS doesn’t step in to block them, seven of those remaining clinics will also probably be forced to close. That won’t significantly increase the distance patients have to travel but it is expected to increase the average cost of the procedure by 15 percent to $701.

And it will likely mean we see that swath of deep red in the middle of the country expand even more — particularly in the red states in the South and Midwest.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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