Getting an abortion was already hard. Then the hurricanes arrived

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “The state has made it continually difficult for our patients to access abortion care any way they can, and during a storm like this, it’s just magnified immensely,” Barbara Zdravecky, CEO of Planned Parenthood Southwest and Central Florida told The Independent. Hurricanes have created more hurdles for patients to seek bortion access in the southeastern US, a region already plagued with barriers to abortion care National and statewide disasters “make it extremely obvious that the abortion ban that we’re living under…is so arbitrary and ridiculous because if we’re unable to provide care due to weather events, it makes patients’ ability to access care even more challenging,” said Dr Daniels. Natural disasters “just exacerbate all of the barriers and stresses that people who are having to flee their states for abortion care.” In North Carolina, because of its lengthier time frame to get abortion care, even before Helene hit, the state was already getting backed up because patients were flocking there. “Unfortunately, the restrictions on abortion care across the entire Midwest and southern part of our country have disproportionately impacted people with lower incomes, also people living in rural communities and BIPOC folks who are already oftentimes cut off from access to all kinds of healthcare,” Melissa Grant, the chief operating officer of carafem, a nonprofit which provides virtual and in-person reproductive health care, told The Independent.