before planned votes this week.

It found that birth rates rose from 2020 to 2023 in counties farther from abortion clinics. Rates rose faster for Black and Hispanic women, those with lower education levels, and people who are unmarried.“The takeaway is that distance still matters,” said Caitlin Myers, a Middlebury College economic professor and one of the authors of the working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. “It really wasn’t obvious that that would be the case.”

“These bans are more than just policies; these are direct attacks on bodily autonomy,” said Regina Davis Moss, president and CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda.The bans also exacerbate the huge disparities in maternal mortality for Black women in the U.S, she said.at a rate nearly 3.5 times higher than white women in 2023.

“We’re going to be faced with increasing numbers of births, which is going to increase the maternal mortality rate, the infant mortality rate and inequities in care,” she said. “It’s very upsetting and sad.”Bree Wallace, director of case management at the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund in Florida, which helps with the logistics and costs of abortions, said people who consider getting an abortion don’t always know their options.

“Many people don’t know their choices or think that it’s just not possible to go out of state,” she said. “A lot of people hear ‘ban’ or ‘six-week ban’ in their state and that’s it.”

Associated Press science writer Laura Ungar contributed from Louisville, Kentucky.Lynn McCann-Yeh, co-executive director of the Baltimore Abortion Fund, which helps pay costs associated with abortion for people who live in Maryland or who travel there, said it’s hard to keep up with an annual budget of about $2 million.

“We would need many, many more times over that to fully be able to meet the full logistic and medical support for each caller,” she said.She said the $3 million that would be made available annually under the new law could make a major difference. The fund could apply to administer a share of that money.

“The $3 million is a great start, but it will take more than that and it will take sustained funding,” she said.Maryland’s legislature is controlled by Democrats, who hold a 2-1 advantage over Republicans in voter registration statewide. Last year, Maryland