Sixty-six clinics have stopped performing pregnancy terminations in the United States since the Supreme Court's decision to no longer guarantee women's right to abortion, according to a study posted online Thursday.
In the 100 days following the landmark ruling, 13 states have completely banned abortions on their soil and two others -- Wisconsin and Georgia -- have severely restricted it, according to this report by the Guttmacher Institute.
In these 15 states, which had 79 clinics performing voluntary terminations of pregnancy (abortion) before the Court's about-face, 26 have completely closed, including the one at the heart of the Court's decision, dubbed "the pink house" in the Mississippi.
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Forty clinics have stopped performing abortions while continuing to provide other care, says this institute, which campaigns for access to contraception and abortions around the world.
The 13 facilities that continue to perform abortions are all located in Georgia, where it remains legal to terminate a pregnancy but only within the first six weeks.
More than 125,000 abortions had taken place in 2020 in the 14 states that no longer had any clinics (including Texas, Missouri, Louisiana or Arizona) and more than 41,000 in Georgia.
Approximately 22 million women of childbearing age live in these states, representing 29% of American women in this age group.
From now on, their inhabitants "must go to another state to have an abortion (with the direct and indirect costs of transport, childcare and absence from her job), abort on their own or continue their pregnancy", underline the authors of the study.
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The closure of these establishments weighs on other states, where clinics performing abortions are “inundated” with requests and “at the limits of their capacities”, creating longer delays for patients.
The situation "will continue to deteriorate," writes the Guttmacher Institute.
Other states, such as Indiana, Ohio, or South Carolina, have laws banning abortions that have been blocked in court, but may soon come into force.
Ultimately, 26 out of 50 states should completely ban the procedure on their soil or greatly reduce it, according to this survey.