PLAN C
like, because for millions of women,
the right to end a pregnancy has al-
ready been rendered meaningless. As
of 2014, about 40 percent of Ameri-
can women of reproductive age live in
counties without an abortion provider;
today, 11 million live more than an hour
away from the nearest facility. As of
July, Missouri’s last clinic was battling
a health department dispute that would
have made it the first state in almost 50
years without a single abortion clinic;
five other states have only one left.
Yet as the clinic infrastructure has
eroded, a new, if somewhat patchy, one
is being built to fill the gap. Nonprofit
groups known as abortion funds, like the
Mississippi Reproductive Freedom
Fund, directly support women who seek
abortions but need assistance with the
cost, the distance, and the stress of walk-
ing past anti-abortion pickets. The funds
were created decades ago in response
to restrictions on clinic access—most
notably the 1976 Hyde Amendment,
which banned Medicaid coverage of
abortion—and have had years to get
organized. “Abortion funds are ready,”
Renee Bracey Sherman, senior public
affairs manager at the National Net-
work of Abortion Funds, an association
of more than 70 groups across the
country, said at a recent panel on the
post-Roe landscape.
A flourishing world of underground
abortion has also emerged, allowing
women to bypass the clinic altogether.
Some women are teaching each other
at-home procedures. Many more are
turning to the internet, where a hand-
ful of suppliers have jumped into the
market to send abortion pills straightto women’s homes. The pills, misopros-
tol and mifepristone, are a highly effective
and safe combination that clinics have
prescribed for early abortions for almost
two decades. Last year, a Dutch physi-
cian known for performing abortions
on a ship in international waters mailed
nearly 2,600 medication abortion kits to
women in the United States. Researchers
and legal experts keeping an eye on the
spread of self-induced abortion say these
numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.
Abortion by mail is the future. With or
without an unfavorable Supreme Court
ruling, the black market is here to stay.
International online pill providers are
difficult targets for law enforcement.
And the demand for convenient, safe,
and private abortion is unlikely to wane,
whether or not in-clinic abortion gets
harder to come by. “The train has leftDwindling
Choices
The current state of abortion
The estimated
number of abortions
has been dropping
for more than two
decades. Reasons
may include more
abortion restrictions
and more contracep-
tion access.WHEN ABORTIONS ARE PERFORMEDWOMEN 15–44 GETTING ABORTIONS300,0000900,000600,0001,200,0001,500,000’95 ’00 ’05 ’10 ’14