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  • Title: Abortion availability in the United States.
    Author: Seims S.
    Journal: Fam Plann Perspect; 1980; 12(2):88, 93-101. PubMed ID: 7364033.
    Abstract:
    The 1977-78 Alan Guttmacher Institute survey of US abortion providers is analyzed to find out how available abortion services are in the US, and ways are suggested to remedying existing inequities. 8 of 10 US counties were found to have no hospital, clinic, or physician providing any abortions at all in 1977, and in all but 5% of US counties services were not adequate to meet the need. As a result, more than a million women in need of abortion services were unable to obtain them in their own counties, and 506 thousand could not obtain them at all. Services were most conspicuously absent in rural or other sparsely settled counties. Some women who wanted abortions could travel from a county without a provider to one nearby with available services, but some 324 thousand women in need lived in places where there was no provider and no neighboring county with a provider large enough to serve them. The great majority of these counties had hospitals and obstetrician-gynecologists who could have provided abortion services if they had been willing to do so. Restrictive laws as well as inaccessibility played a role in inhibiting abortion service provision. Strategies for improving abortion service options include initiating new clinic services in counties populous enough to support them; organizing part time or satellite clinic facilities, or adding abortion services to outpatient hospital services; organizing referral services, advertising and publicity to inform women of available service options in other counties; and reminding doctors of the position of their professional organizations that abortion should be provided equitably as a basic component of health services.
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