There are few clinics offering abortions left in Texas Matthew Busch/Bloomberg via Getty Images

If abortion clinics close and women have to travel further to get to one, abortion rates decline. These are the findings of a study that investigated the effects of a law introduced in Texas.

The 2013 Texas House Bill 2 required facilities that perform abortions to meet hospital-like building standards, as well as stipulating that doctors at these facilities must have admitting privileges at a hospital within 48 kilometres of an abortion clinic. These provisions were ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 2016, but in the three years the law was in place, many clinics were forced to close.

In 2012, there were 41 facilities offering abortions in Texas, but by 2014, that number had fallen to 21. Before the law, 17 of Texas’s 254 counties had at least one clinic capable of performing abortions. By 2014, only six counties had such clinics. Across the state, the distance a woman would need to travel to get an abortion increased by an average of 80 kilometres.


160 kilometres or more

The closures hit rural counties in west and south Texas the hardest. In places where the change in distance to a clinic was 160 kilometres or more, data from the Texas Department of State Health Services reveals that the number of women receiving clinic performed-abortions halved, while counties with little to no change in clinic locations saw a 16 per cent decline. Overall, the number of abortions in Texas dropped by more than 12,000 in a two-year period.

“The law was purportedly intended to protect women’s health,” says Liza Fuentes, a research scientist at reproductive health organisation the Guttmacher Institute. But because some healthcare providers were forced to stop offering abortions, some women could not get the services they were seeking, she says.

Some might argue that a woman who really needs an abortion will travel the distance to get one. But Fuentes’s research has found that these clinic changes have made it more expensive for some women to get abortions.

“There may be more women who, when they can’t get to a clinic, are turning to self-induced abortion,” says Rachel Jones, another researcher at the Guttmacher Institute.

More contraception

Jones is an author of a recent study showing that abortion rates across the US have hit a historic low, dropping below 1 million for the first time since 1975. The report concludes that restrictive abortion laws may be a cause, but also points to increased rates of contraceptive use.

“We found the abortion rate went down nationally whether in states with restrictive laws or states that are supportive of abortion rights, like New York and California,” says Jones. “[In states like New York] it’s the improvements in contraceptive use that are bringing down the rates. If you increase access to contraception and to family planning services, you’ll prevent unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion.”

Journal reference: JAMA, DOI: 10.1001/jama.2016.17026

Read more: Abortion could be made illegal in parts of Trump’s America