Abortion-friendly states prep for more patients if Roe falls

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Leaders of a Tennessee abortion clinic calculated driving distances and studied passenger rail routes as they scanned the map for another place to offer services if the Supreme Court lets states restrict or eliminate abortion rights.

They chose Carbondale in Illinois — a state that has easy abortion access but is surrounded by restrictive states in the South and Midwest. It will be the southernmost clinic in Illinois when it opens in August.

“I think at this point, we all know the stark reality that we’re facing in Tennessee. We are going to lose abortion access this year,” said Jennifer Pepper, chief executive officer of CHOICES: Memphis Center for Reproductive Health.

With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to let states tightly limit or ban abortion, reproductive rights advocates are planning to open new clinics or expand existing ones in states where lawmakers are not clamping down on access.

Some Democrat-led states in the West and Northeast also are proposing public money for an expected influx of people traveling from other places to terminate pregnancies.

When it opened in 1974, a year after the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide, CHOICES became the first abortion provider in Memphis, a commercial hub for rural Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and southern Missouri.

Carbondale is a three-hour drive north of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee's two largest cities. It's also on a New Orleans-to-Chicago Amtrak route through areas where abortion access could disappear, including Mississippi, western Tennessee and western Kentucky.

“Its location and geography were the original reason that drew us to Carbondale, but the incredible heart of the Carbondale community is what led us to know we had found a second home for...