Talk Poverty -According to the Guttmacher Institute, roughly 75 percent of those who get abortions are poor or low-income — not necessarily a surprise, given the lack of access to affordable preventative health care and contraception. Unlike most medical procedures, the majority of states don’t cover terminating a pregnancy through Medicaid (with very narrow exceptions), leaving patients to pay for the procedure out of pocket. But for low-income patients — especially in rural areas across the country — finding the funds to pay for an abortion out of pocket is quite literally only half the battle.
The other half? Paying to get to the procedure itself — a task that can cost hundreds of dollars on its own and eat up hours, if not days, of travel time in states that lack usable local public transit systems or mass transportation between rural and urban areas.
Nearly 20 percent of poor people lack their own vehicle, and the same states that pass paternalistic abortion restrictions are also the states least likely to spend infrastructure funding dollars on mass transit, considering it a form of “social welfare” for those too poor to own cars. States like Mississippi, Missouri, or Kentucky, which have just one clinic each, lack usable public transit within their borders, or easy access into major cities from suburbs and rural towns via train, light-rail, or even major bus lines.
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