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TexasTowelie

(111,314 posts)
Thu May 17, 2018, 10:43 PM May 2018

Texas Has the Most Cities More than 100 Miles from an Abortion Clinic, Study Finds

Health care “deserts” are often considered to be a rural phenomenon, but a study published this week illustrates the degree to which the wave of anti-abortion legislation in red states has wiped out abortion access even in higher-population areas.

This is especially true in Texas, where a sweeping anti-abortion law in 2013 shuttered more than half the clinics in the state, leaving wide swaths of West and South Texas without a single provider. Texas now has 10 cities of more than 50,000 without an abortion clinic within 100 miles, according to a study published Monday in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. That’s more than any other state.

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas’ omnibus anti-abortion law, House Bill 2, but the damage to abortion access has proved to be long-lasting. The law forced two dozen of the more than 40 abortion clinics in the state to close, and only a few have reopened. Texans in some metropolitan areas still must travel as far as 300 miles one-way for the procedure, according to the study.

Of the five cities where people live the farthest from abortion clinics in the United States, four are in West Texas, according to the study. Patients in Lubbock must travel the farthest distance of the four — 308 miles one-way to the closest clinic in Fort Worth. That’s the second farthest in the country. (Rapid City, South Dakota is 318 miles from a clinic.) Midland and Odessa are also among the fives, as well as Amarillo, where the closest option for an abortion is in Oklahoma.

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-most-cities-more-than-100-miles-from-abortion-clinic/

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