CUMBERLAND, Md. — Monday marked two years since the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. The landmark case reversed Roe v. Wade, paving the way for abortion bans in several states. West Virginia is one of those states that had trigger bans in place, meaning it took effect immediately.
WUSA9 went to a Maryland clinic that is just five miles from the West Virginia state line. They opened shortly after the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
Tucked in the foothills of mountain Maryland, just outside of Cumberland, is the Women's Health Center of Maryland.
Executive Director Katie Quinonez travels hundreds of miles from her home in West Virginia to the edge of what has become Appalachia's abortion desert.
“I want people to understand that there is nothing wrong with abortion care, there's nothing wrong with needing an abortion, or having an abortion,” she said.
“The fact that it is difficult to access is by design.”
In 2022, Quinonez was working at West Virginia's only abortion clinic. That all changed June 24, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“I got a text that read, 'Dobbs came down, Roe overturned, cancel all appointments,'” Quinonez said.
“It was infuriating and heartbreaking. There is not a single abortion provider now in the state of West Virginia.”
According to the Guttmacher institute, 100 days after the Dobbs decision, over 66 providers across 15 different states stopped providing abortions, leaving millions of women living in states where abortion access is heavily restricted.
RELATED: The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Here’s the state of abortion rights now in the US
After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion deserts began to spread across the country. They're defined as regions without an abortion clinic within a day's drive. As detailed by this map, the entire southern portion of the United States, extending up through Appalachia, is included.
“We sit on the border of Western Maryland and northeastern West Viriginia, there’s not a single abortion provider in West Virginia and it is a vast, rural. mountainous state,” Quinonez said.
“We're at minimum, 100 miles away from another abortion provider if we're going east or west, and if we're going south, it's even farther.”
Abortion deserts force women to cross state lines, traveling long distance to get reproductive care.
“It was already hard enough to access abortion care. Especially if you're not someone with the financial means to just pay out of pocket,” Quinonez said. “Now you have to add in the additional cost of driving or flying out of state, and potentially paying for lodging in another state, so all of that combines to just compound on how difficult it already was.”
Quinonez says this disproportionality impacts communities of color.
“The reality is that rich white people will always be able to get the abortions that they need,” she said.
Over half of her abortion patients are traveling from states like West Virginia.
“When abortion bans are passed, they specifically target people who are in low incomes, people who live in rural areas like West Virginia, like mountain Maryland where we're sitting today,” she said.
For Quinonez, this mission is personal.
“I have been a teenager holding a positive pregnancy test in my bathroom and thinking my life is over,” she said. “I came to this work because of my own abortion stories.”
Her ties to the clinic extend beyond her employment, once being on the receiving end of abortion care at the clinic in West Virginia.
“I take myself back to my bathroom when I was holding a positive pregnancy test at the age of 17, and how hopeless I felt, and then immense relief that came along with being able to end that pregnancy and have an abortion, so that I could live my life.”
Quinonez says she has made it her life's work to give others the power of choice.
“One thing that gives me hope about the future is that young people are being bolder and demanding what they deserve.”
Even though legal in Maryland, abortion rights will be on the Maryland ballot in November.
Voters will decide if abortion rights should be enshrined into the state Constitution.
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