Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, more than 20 states have completely banned or severely restricted abortion. In 2023 alone, over 171,000 women were forced to travel out of state—in some cases, several states away—to have an abortion.
The Center for Reproductive Rights unveiled a national video campaign last week highlighting the distances women have been forced to travel for abortion care after their own states criminalized the procedure.
The campaign’s centerpiece video shows a young woman, Kelsey, setting off on a solo road trip, before revealing other women on road trips of their own. All listen to Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” … in the car, on the bus, on the highway, at the gas station; the song becomes part of a communal soundtrack as the women cross state lines for abortion care. They all end up in the same medical waiting room.
People are being forced to travel hundreds or thousands of miles for time-sensitive healthcare that should be available everywhere. It’s heartbreaking and wrong.
Vanessa Carlton
The 2002 song “A Thousand Miles”—Carlton’s debut single and a hopeful pop anthem that’s been covered on Glee—appears in the video in a melancholy, toned down version.
“No one should have to travel for essential healthcare,” says Carlton, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, at the end of the video.
Abortion access is a topic deeply close to Carlton, who had to be rushed into emergency surgery to save her life when she suffered an ectopic pregnancy in 2013.
“If that had happened to me today in the wrong state, I may not have survived,” said Carlton. “Women in the same situation are now being turned away from hospitals because of abortion bans. People are being forced to travel hundreds or thousands of miles for time-sensitive healthcare that should be available everywhere. It’s heartbreaking and wrong.”
So many people can’t afford to leave the state like I did. I think about those people often and what might have happened to me if I couldn’t get out of Texas.
Kate Cox
Last year, Texas woman Kate Cox’s name was said around the country after the Center sued the state of Texas on her behalf. Cox wished to terminate a pregnancy that put her at risk for serious medical complications and could have harmed her fertility. Though she eventually traveled to receive the abortion she needed, the Texas Supreme Court issued a callous ruling that Cox could not legally receive the abortion her doctors recommended for her in her own home state.
“I never thought I would have to flee my own state for healthcare that my doctor said I needed,” she said in a Center for Reproductive Rights’ press release. “I’m now pregnant again because I was able to access abortion care in New Mexico, which preserved my fertility. But so many people can’t afford to leave the state like I did. I think about those people often and what might have happened to me if I couldn’t get out of Texas.”
Kayla Smith, a woman in Idaho, had to travel to Washington state for abortion care that saved her life.
“Had I not gone out of state, I could have died from complications with preeclampsia, leaving my daughter without a mother and my husband without a wife,” Smith said. She has since moved to Washington with her family after her home state put her life at risk by keeping her from receiving an abortion. She and her husband “feel strongly about raising our girls in a state where they would have bodily autonomy,” Smith said when Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) brought her as her guest to Biden’s State of the Union address.
The Center’s campaign website also features an interactive map representing each state’s current abortion laws and how far women might be forced to travel to another state for an abortion. Website visitors can also use a form to contact their local representatives and urge them to vote for federal legislation protecting abortion rights throughout the country, not just in a handful of states.
In August, the Center filed legal complaints against two Texas hospitals for denying women emergency care for life-threatening ectopic pregnancies. Both women nearly died and each lost one fallopian tube as a result of the delay in care. Right now, the Center for Reproductive Rights represents more than 30 women who were refused emergency abortion care despite serious pregnancy complications. Many of them had to travel to a different state for life-saving surgeries.
“It is dehumanizing to force a person to travel hundreds or thousands of miles for health care,” said Joung-ah Ghedini-Williams, chief marketing and communications officer at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Yet that is what women have been doing every day in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Everyone should be able to access abortion in their home state, regardless of why they need it.”
This election season has seen several ads delving into women’s experiences struggling to get abortions. In July, a Biden campaign ad featured Hadley Duvall, the Kentucky woman raped and impregnated by her stepfather, and in October, an ad from All* Above All and Project 68 focused on the families left behind when state antiabortion laws deny women life-saving abortion care.
With just one week to go before polls close, the Center’s new video campaign shows the incredible strain and costs that states impose on women seeking abortions by forcing them to travel for care … and the fatal consequences for women who can’t.
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