OBJECTS IN THE OBESTRIX EXOLUTION SPEEDS BY OBEDUCTION IN IOWA. A PRESIDENT-ELECTRON FOR THE COSMIC COLLISIONS

Idaho’s obstetrics exodus is not happening in isolation. Highly skilled doctors who specialize in handling risky pregnancies are among the obstetricians who are leaving their practices in red states. Idaho is a state that some new doctors are avoiding.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists president-elect said the issue was not about abortion. “This is an issue about access to comprehensive obstetric and gynecologic care. Everyone should have access to care that is based in science if access is restricted.

Idaho bars abortion at any point in a pregnancy with just two exceptions: when it is necessary to save the life of the mother and in certain cases of rape or incest, though the victim must provide a police report. A federal judge issued a temporary order permitting abortion in certain cases when the health of the woman is at risk. Doctors convicted of violating the ban face two to five years in prison.

State Abortion Statistics: “What has been going on” in the last few years, and what have we learnt since that decision?

“If you’re interested in where people are going, then I think the numbers tell a big part of that story because it represents a lot of people traveling,” says Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a data scientist at the Guttmacher Institute.

“The percentage increase, I think, is also important because it does speak to the potential strain this puts on providers capacity to provide care,” he says.

Maddow-Zimet says that Guttmacher plans to keep updating it in nearly real time. Data will be published showing how new abortion laws in Indiana and South Carolina affect where women go to access the procedure.

States with abortion bans can allow a small number of abortions if they meet certain exceptions. In Texas, there have been at least four abortions on average each month this year. (A lawsuit alleges that Texas’s medical emergency exception is too narrow and prevents or delays care that’s medically indicated.)

Some of the changes are unrelated to last year’s Supreme Court decision that overturned the right to abortion. “2020 was a long time ago and a lot has happened since then,” he says. The COVID pandemic, and expanded telehealth, and a trend of increase in overall abortions that had already begun, all no doubt contributed to how state abortion numbers have changed to different degrees.

One big caveat of this research is that it only measured abortions that happened in clinics, hospitals and doctor’s offices, Maddow-Zimet says. “We don’t try to measure the number of self-managing abortions, where people might be ordering pills from a pharmacy out of the US or obtaining them from a community network” he said.