The rate of abortions is on a downward trend, which has led to the closure of several clinics that perform the procedure across the United States.
According to
Bloomberg, 14 clinics in Iowa have closed their doors since 2011, along with 13 in Michigan, 12 in California, and several in Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. A tough
Texas law passed in 2013 has made it harder for clinics to stay open, which has resulted in the closure of more than 30 in that state, reports Bloomberg.
A
FiveThirtyEight story points to several reasons why at least 162 abortion clinics have shut down since 2011. One is that patients have more access to various types of birth control, while another is cost.
The consumer's cost of an abortion has stayed mostly level from what it was 30 years ago. The problem, however, is that when a Medicaid-level patient has an abortion, she pays a lower rate. The clinics, which purposefully keep costs low for the sake of patient access, often lose money.
"We've cut every cost we could think of. We have cut salaries. We haven't given raises. We're still hanging on by our fingernails," Peg Johnston, an office manager of a clinic in Binghamton, N.Y., told FiveThirtyEight.
Other issues for abortion clinics include stricter regulations, which can force clinics to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade their facilities or risk turning away patients who are past a certain point in their pregnancy.
Clinics who have survived, reports FiveThirtyEight, sometimes expand their array of services to other aspects of women's health like birthing, pap smears, and other services.
© 2023 Newsmax. All rights reserved.