A place this size, especially one in a historically red state, was unlikely to have an abortion clinic before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Since then, Kansas has become one of five states that people are most likely to travel to in order to get an abortion when they’re unable to at home, said Caitlin Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College who researches abortion policies.
Abortions spiked in Kansas by 152% after Roe, according to a recent analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. Using Myers’ count, six of the clinics in Kansas, Illinois, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia that have opened or relocated post-Roe are in communities with fewer than 25,000 people. Two others are in communities of fewer than 50,000.
In my experience women say this when they (mistakenly) take their current life and transpose it on their younger self. For example, a married woman with a stable job and great family in her thirties looks back at the abortion she decided to get when she was 18, dating an abusive boyfriend, living with her evangelical parents, and unemployed and says “I’m doing great now so it would have been the same then”. It’s self delusion at a grand scale, but I suppose it’s a way for them to “blame the world” instead of taking responsibility for their choice.