Hurricane Helene Disrupted Abortion Care in the South

CLIMATE | ASHEVILLE, N.C. — North Carolina’s only abortion provider west of Charlotte has been closed since Hurricane Helene due to lack of potable water.

The month-long closure of Asheville Planned Parenthood forced patients to travel hours for care. Additionally, other abortion clinics in North Carolina have struggled; These clinics have seen an increase in appointments over the past two years as neighboring states have limited or banned abortion procedures. Roe v. wade by the Supreme Court.

“This is a very harmful loss of access for patients in North Carolina, as well as surrounding states and the region,” said Julia Walker, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the South Atlantic. “But if we had laws that allowed people greater access to care, we wouldn’t have such a damaging and impactful storm.”

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When Helene entered Asheville last month, the city’s water supply lines were disabled. Water distribution to much of the city has recently been restored, but even now the water is unsafe for drinking and washing hands.

“We need potable water for our healthcare operations,” Walker said of the clinic, which previously performed “a few hundred” abortions a month.

Other health care facilities in Asheville have brought in tanker trucks of water to continue their operations, but Planned Parenthood is still working to request an emergency water supply from the state.

Meanwhile, the organization has moved many of its operations online, using telehealth appointments to prescribe birth control and gender transition medications. The facility cannot provide other services, such as prescribing abortion-inducing pills, due to restrictions in North Carolina law.

When the state banned abortions after 12 weeks in 2023, it also required patients to seek counseling and information from their doctors 72 hours before having an abortion. The law requires that the first appointment be made in person.

“None of our abortion services can be telehealth,” Walker said.

It’s unclear when the Asheville clinic will reopen. Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, tried to shift appointments to its locations in Charlotte and Winston-Salem, which are more than two hours away. Some staff normally based in Asheville were sent to work at these locations.

14 abortion clinics in North Carolina have seen a huge increase in patients since the Supreme Court ruled that states could ban abortions in 2022.

Immediately after the court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health OrganizationSouthern states imposed restrictions or bans on abortion. This includes Tennessee, which bans abortion in almost all cases, and South Carolina, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

Many patients in those states sought abortions in North Carolina, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health organization that tracks abortions.

In 2020, North Carolina clinics provided abortions to approximately 5,500 patients from other states. In 2023, this number was 16,000.

“We’re talking about a really big increase in travel to North Carolina,” Guttmacher data scientist Isaac Maddow-Zimet said.

Although no data from last month was yet available, Maddow-Zimet said closing the Asheville clinic could have “major impacts because the system is already so strained.”

“As people try to navigate this environment, they are doing so over a 12-week period, so any delays in arranging travel or rescheduling appointments could have an impact,” Zimet said.

Helene is not the first storm influencing abortion care. a study I looked at calls about abortion in Texas Following Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the fund found that eight women cited the storm as the reason they needed financial assistance.

A woman who participated in the study said she was raped in a hurricane shelter and wanted to terminate her pregnancy. An abortion clinic in Houston, where she lived, was closed due to the storm, and she needed money for the 10-hour drive to El Paso.

The North Carolina Mountain Area Abortion Doula Collective has also seen an increase in the number of patients seeking help since the storm, said Maren Hurley, a member of the group. These include patients in Tennessee who initially sought care in Asheville but were cut off from the city because Helene washed out portions of Interstate 40, which connects the two states.

The doula collective raises money to help women cover medical care, transportation, and overnight abortion-related expenses. Since the storm, the group has been helping patients evaluate options for rescheduling care, Hurley said.

It’s not uncommon for people seeking abortions to rely on friends and neighbors to get to their appointments or to keep an eye on their children during the procedure, Hurley said. But many of those people are focused on their own recovery after the storm, he said.

“We’ve heard from people whose cars have been swept away,” Hurley said. “People who were able to afford care before Helene now have no income, no shelter, and no immediate plan to meet their basic needs.”

One patient displaced by Helene needed a second-trimester abortion because she had a genetic condition that would prevent her fetus from surviving outside the womb and endanger her mother’s life, Hurley said. The patient initially went to live with his family in Florida before having to evacuate again when Hurricane Milton hit two weeks ago. She resettled in North Carolina and received the abortion with financial help from her doula collective; this grant gave him $7,000 to cover the costs of the procedure.

“Every logistical hurdle to getting an abortion was exacerbated by the storm,” Hurley said.