{"id":28,"date":"2016-04-22T14:13:15","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T14:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/?p=28"},"modified":"2025-12-29T01:36:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T06:36:58","slug":"restrictions-and-limited-access-force-women-to-travel-to-get-abortions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/restrictions-and-limited-access-force-women-to-travel-to-get-abortions\/","title":{"rendered":"Restrictions and Limited Access Force Women to Travel to Get Abortions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this summer, NOVA Women\u2019s Healthcare (an abortion clinic in Virginia) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/07\/15\/virginia-abortion-clinic_n_3599262.html\">shut its doors<\/a>.&nbsp; It was the busiest abortion clinic in the state, so it didn\u2019t close due to a lack of demand.&nbsp; Rather, the clinic was forced to close due to stringent new laws aimed at curtailing abortion access and limiting a woman\u2019s right to choose.&nbsp; Anti-abortion groups would consider this a victory and mistakenly believe that they are stopping abortions.&nbsp; Really, they are just forcing women to travel long distances in order to gain access to abortion services.<\/p>\n<p>As an article in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrollcountytimes.com\/news\/local\/some-women-seeking-abortions-cross-state-lines\/article_045d9f77-379d-56b2-beb2-0206b7940530.html?utm_source=nar.al&amp;utm_medium=urlshortener&amp;utm_campaign=Twitter\">Carroll County Times<\/a> points out, many of these Virginian women seeking an abortion will simply go to Maryland to get the procedure.&nbsp; With only 16 licensed abortion clinics in the entire state, Maryland can hardly be considered a state with easy access to abortion.&nbsp; Compared to neighboring Virginia and Pennsylvania though, both of which passed anti-abortion laws recently, Maryland seems like a safe haven of choice.<\/p>\n<p>In Maryland, a woman only needs to make one appointment with an abortion clinic. She can then have her prep work, counseling and the abortion on the same day.&nbsp; The entire procedure takes about 4 to 6 hours, during which the patient will speak to a counselor before the actual abortion is performed.&nbsp; There are no set timeframes for the viability of the fetus: viability is determined by the doctor.&nbsp;&nbsp; Compare this to Virginia where, as of May 1<sup>st<\/sup> of this year, woman must get state-sponsored counseling which discourages them from getting an abortion and then wait 24 hours before the procedure. Considering the fact that 85% of Virginian counties have no abortion clinic, this means that women have to make multiple long distance trips to get an abortion.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than endure the hassle of getting an abortion in Virginia, many women instead cross state lines into Maryland. So, it is no wonder that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guttmacher.org\/pubs\/sfaa\/virginia.html\">Virginia abortion rates<\/a> are seemingly on the decline whereas <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guttmacher.org\/pubs\/sfaa\/maryland.html\">Maryland abortion rates<\/a> are rising above the national average.<\/p>\n<p>The facts show us that curtailing abortion access does not decrease abortion.&nbsp; It just forces women to travel further.&nbsp; To give you an idea of how ineffective abortion restrictions are, just take a look at Poland.&nbsp; It has a complete ban on abortion, but it doesn\u2019t stop women from traveling very far distances across <i>country<\/i> and cultural borders to get an abortion.<\/p>\n<p>Limiting abortion access won\u2019t stop abortion.&nbsp; What <i>will <\/i>reduce abortion is providing better sex education, better access to contraception, and more options for pregnant women (like free childcare and scholarships for single moms).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this summer, NOVA Women\u2019s Healthcare (an abortion clinic in Virginia) shut its doors.&nbsp; It was the busiest abortion clinic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[2,4,6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7told-s","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":839,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanwomensservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}