Two months ago, the state of Florida enacted its strict six-week abortion law. At the time, many people worried about how this would affect access to abortion care in the South. As the Society of Family Planning's #WeCount report found, post-Dobbs Florida became one of the top three states to see a rise in out-of-state abortions. In other words, it became an unlikely surge state as the vast majority of its neighboring states had more severe restrictions.

Now, new data from the National Abortion Federation (NAF) found that in the two months after going into effect, there has been a 575% increase in people who the hotline has supported to travel out of the state for care, compared to the same time in 2023.

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“What we've seen in the aftermath of this ban is just devastation and chaos, and it has really impacted the lives of Floridians but also has expanded its impact throughout the southeast,” Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation, told Salon in a phone interview. “We have seen a dramatic increase in people being forced to travel outside of Florida, outside of the Southeast, and having to travel further distances to access the essential health care that they need.”

NAF runs the National Abortion Hotline, which is the largest patient assistance fund in the country. They help people both pay for their abortion care and with associated........

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