alt Hacker News>those abortion bans have definitely reduced the number of abortions. Not zero, but that's a silly goal for any ban.
really? what percentage of Americans can't afford a bus ticket to the nearest city in an adjacent state?
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A lot of rural areas don't have good transit. Even if they do, it's hours round trip. Here's an example. North Dakota has an abortion ban. Someone in Minot would need to travel almost 5 hours to Moorhead, MN or almost 7 hours to Billings, MT. Now that's not any different really than before the ban, because the only clinic in ND that provided abortions was across the river from Moorhead in Fargo. But what if that clinic in Moorhead closes? Or what if Montana bans abortion? It's banned in South Dakota, so people out in western ND, SD, or anywhere in Montana are going to have to travel even further. There are many small communities around here with no bus lines or trains coming through so they're stuck if they don't have a good car.
About half of Americans lack any access to intercity transport that isn't a private car.[1]
About 15% of rural Americans aren't within 25 miles of any intercity transit, much less interstate; low-income residents are disproportionally represented in that group. That figure jumps to 25% if you exclude suburbs, and in some states that figure is as high as 62%.[2]
Even as intercity bus demand has increased due to the declining quality of air travel in the US,[3] rural intercity bus access has declined. Greyhound served many rural routes until its slow collapse before being acquired by FlixBus, which is more focused on urban access than Greyhound was. The deregulation of intercity bus access in 1982, which led to the closure of many intercity routes (disproportionally in the rural Midwest) that required subsidization from more profitable routes, was a major factor.[4]
So "what percentage of Americans can't afford a bus ticket to the nearest city in an adjacent state" is a non-starter of a question, because most of the Americans who'd _need_ an interstate bus ticket can't even get to a bus stop without first owning a car... with which they could simply drive to another state.
1: https://itdp.org/2024/01/24/high-cost-transportation-united-...
2: https://www.bts.gov/data-spotlight/85-rural-residents-have-r...
3: https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/travel/bus-travel-tickets-airl...
4: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/greyhound-bus-tran...