The news of the potential overturn of Roe v. Wade has caused a surge of calls to clinics across the United States. Julie Burkhart, a reproductive health advocate and founder of Wellspring Health Access, is fighting to keep abortion accessible in the West. To do this, she and her team are working to open clinics in strategic locations that can serve as many patients as possible.
This is especially important in states like Illinois, which have strong protections against abortion but are surrounded by states that are likely to prohibit it. Caitlin Myers, professor of economics at Middlebury College, has studied access to abortion and found that patients are already facing long waits at clinics across the country. Her research estimates that one in five people seek an abortion in the United States. To increase access to compassionate and convenient abortion services, carafem chose the Nashville area due to its limited number of providers and its proximity to Kentucky, where there is only one abortion provider in the entire state. Ohio laws have been in place for years that use affirmative defense language to prohibit late abortions, except in medical emergencies. This allows abortions up to the point of fetal viability (around 24 weeks of pregnancy) and allows subsequent procedures to be performed if the parents' health is at risk or if the fetus is diagnosed with a serious health problem.
More than half of patients suffer serious health complications, double the rate of patients in states where abortions were immediately available.carafem opened a clinic in Casper, Wyoming, less than 200 miles from Nebraska and South Dakota. This expands access across the region as there was only one clinic available in Jackson, just across the border from Idaho. Lawyers representing the state argued that no prosecutor would press charges against a doctor for performing an abortion on a sick patient.
