Note: Maternity care deserts are counties in which access to maternity health care services is limited or absent, either through lack of services or barriers to a woman’s ability to access that care.
Nearly two dozen states have moved to restrict abortion or ban it altogether since the reversal of Roe v. Wade — meaning more people, especially those with low incomes and from marginalized communities, will be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.
So are states prepared to pay for the infrastructure needed to support these parents and children? The data paints a grim picture for many families: Mothers and children in states with the toughest abortion restrictions tend to have less access to health care and financial assistance, as well as worse health outcomes.
Stuart Butler, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, calls the end of Roe "a double whammy" for people who live in these states, which are mostly in the South.
"They are far less likely to have assistance for themselves and their children, and they are far less likely to have health care available to them when they are pregnant and for their children," he tells Morning Edition. "And that means that there's going to be not only more hardship, but greater health problems and maternal deaths and so on ... unless there is a fundamental change in political behavior in those states."
As NPR has reported, a large body of research shows that being denied an abortion limits peoples'...
; ; ; President on Thursday claimed not to and suggested that his multiple attacks against the over the past week are merely the product of a disagreement over ’s nuclear weapons program — somethi...