It creates a world in which, just by virtue of zip code and income, some women will have no or severely limited access to abortion — an absurdly arbitrary way of a country affording constitutional rights to some and not others.

Women of higher means will be able to afford to travel to places where they can access abortion, but that won’t be possible for women already struggling to make ends meet. Those women often don’t have a car, let alone the money for airfare to travel across the state or to another state to reach a provider. Then there are the other related costs of child-care, time off work, hotel stays, and meals away from home, all of which put access to abortion further out of reach for these women.

These cautionary tales are more than conjecture. A 2019 report from the Institute of Women’s Policy Research reports on multiple studies that suggest a link between access to or exposure to abortion and greater educational and employment attainment for women. The converse was found too when comparing states with more or less restrictive access and exposure to abortion.