Florida abortion ban’s aftermath has been ‘chaos,’ experts say

Two months ago, the state of Florida enacted its strict six-week abortion law. At the time, many people were concerned about the impact it would have on access to abortion care in the South. As the Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount report revealed, Florida became one of the three states with the largest increase in out-of-state abortions after the Dobbs case. In other words, it’s a state where abortions are unlikely to be performed again, since the vast majority of neighboring states have stricter restrictions.

Now, new data from the National Abortion Federation (NAF) has revealed that in the two months since the measure went into effect, the number of people the hotline helped travel out of state for care increased by 575% compared to the same period in 2023.

“What we’ve seen as a result of this ban is just devastation and chaos, and it’s really impacted the lives of Floridians, but it’s also extended its impact throughout the Southeast,” Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation, told Salon in a phone interview. “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of people who are forced to travel outside of Florida, outside of the Southeast, and having to travel greater distances to access the critical health care that they need.”

NAF operates the National Abortion Hotline, the nation’s largest patient assistance fund. It helps people pay for their abortion care and associated travel costs, whether it’s airfare, rideshare vouchers, or other means of accessing abortion care. In particular, NAF has seen an increase in the funding needed to allocate per patient as people are forced to travel longer distances.

“Last year at this time, the average cost of travel assistance for a patient was about $1,000,” Fonteno said. “That amount has already increased, and that’s without even factoring in the cost of an abortion procedure or a medical abortion. It makes abortion less accessible to women.”

Under Florida law, it is a felony to perform or actively participate in an abortion six weeks into a pregnancy. The ban includes exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking up to 15 weeks, as well as to save a woman’s life or prevent “substantial and irreversible” impairment. However, as experts point out, these exceptions are designed to be difficult to use and often place an additional burden on patients to overcome.

For example, under the law, to qualify for one of the exceptions for rape, incest or human trafficking, a woman “must provide a copy of a protective order, police report, medical records or other court order or document proving that she is obtaining the termination of her pregnancy because she is a victim of rape, incest or human trafficking.”

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“Oftentimes these exceptions are added to abortion bans to try to make them more reasonable, but they’re not,” Fonteno said. “One of the main reasons is that these exceptions put an additional burden on the patient and are designed to be an additional barrier to accessing care.”

Fonteno said the hotline has found “that many people are unable to get care because of these very limited exceptions” and that many people, even in those circumstances, must travel out of state to access care.

“They have to fly or go to Washington, New York, places where the cost is higher, to get the care they need, and so it has an interesting impact on the entire sector,” she said. “It also impacts the amount of funds that people have, because the more people travel and the more the cost of care goes up, the faster the funds available to help people run out.”

Alisha Dingus, director of development for the DC Abortion Fund, told Salon in July that they were seeing an influx of people from other states outside the region, including North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

“After the ban went into effect in Florida, we saw our call rate from Floridians increase by 200% in a single month,” Dingus said. “The month before the ban, we supported nine Floridians, and then the month after we supported 36, so that number increased significantly by the time the ban went into effect.”

At the time, Dingus said she expected that number to continue to rise.

Fortunately, Fonteno said, they didn’t have to turn away calls and force women to carry their pregnancies to term.

“However, I don’t think that just because I’m not aware of it, it doesn’t happen,” Fonteno said. “So I would say that it’s entirely possible that women are forced to carry pregnancies to term that are not viable or that were not wanted.”

Fonteno added that clinics in Florida are doing their best to work with people and get them in as early as possible in pregnancy to get them the care they need.

“They’re getting to the clinics as soon as they can, and when they can’t get to them before that six-week window, the hotline is there to help them,” Fonteno said. “But our NAF member clinics have also said there will be people who won’t be able to get the care they need because they can’t afford to fill the gap and travel out of state for care.”