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Environmental Impacts of Abortion Bans vs Telehealth [1]

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Date: 2023-04-02  

...In a new study, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco surveyed telehealth abortion patients about their experiences — and calculated the travel they avoided. Across more than 6,000 patients in 24 states, 56% of whom were in the West, the researchers found that telehealth saved patients a total of nearly 163,000 miles of driving, or nearly 4,200 hours.

More detailed surveys of a subset of those patients showed that Westerners saved an average of nine miles of driving by using telehealth. But 90% of those patients were in urban areas. For the 10% in rural areas, the difference was far bigger — they saved an average of 83 miles. That mileage adds up. According to the EPA’s carbon footprint calculator, this kept an estimated 63 to 66 metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

The researchers also asked the patients in the study whether an abortion would have been easily accessible to them without telehealth. Most patients of color, younger patients, rural patients and those who would have had to drive over 100 miles for an appointment said no. “Thinking about the folks who were really living at the margins and are already facing many forms of structural oppression, lifting this travel burden feels really tied up in climate justice to me,” said Leah Koenig, a Ph.D. student in epidemiology at UCSF and the lead author of the paper….

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/2/2161705/-Environmental-Impacts-of-Abortion-Bans-vs-Telehealth

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