Health Care

Dozens of clinics no longer offer abortion services, study finds

A bouquet of roses are left by the front gate to the Jackson Women’s Health Organization clinic in Jackson, Miss., Friday, July 8, 2022. The clinic was the only facility that performed abortions in the state. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Sixty-six clinics across 15 states have stopped offering abortions in the 100 days since the Supreme Court revoked the constitutional right to an abortion, according to a study released Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that advocates for abortion rights.

Before the court issued the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling on June 24, the 15 states covered in the report had a total of 79 clinics that provided abortion care. As of Oct. 2, that number had dropped to 13, all of which are in Georgia.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed a law on July 20 prohibiting most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Previously the state had allowed abortions up to 20 weeks.

Among the 66 clinics where abortion is no longer available, 40 are still offering services other than abortion, while 26 have shut down entirely.

Guttmacher, which tracks abortion-related legislation and policies at the federal and state level, focused its analysis on the 15 states that were enforcing either total or six-week abortion bans as of Oct. 2.

Most of those bans allow narrow circumstances in which an abortion may be allowed. In Georgia, for example, the new ban allows exceptions if a woman faces serious harm or death in pregnancy, or in cases of rape or incest, as long as a police report has been filed.

According to the Guttmacher report, in the 13 states that implemented total abortion bans as of Oct. 2, all clinics were forced to stop offering abortions. In Wisconsin, providers facing legal uncertainty around the state’s pre-Roe v. Wade abortion ban have preemptively stopped offering abortions to avoid future prosecution.

The states covered in the report are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

The Guttmacher state legislative tracking predicts that a total of 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion within a year of Roe being overturned.