Abortion: Pressure grows on Virginia as new bans arise in the south

As North and South Carolina move to tighten abortion restrictions, women seeking to terminate pregnancies in the US south may be running out of options.

As access has been severely curtailed, Virginia is poised to become the only state in the region to allow abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The latest restrictions are expected to force even more out-of-state patients to seek abortions in Virginia.

That is putting pressure on already strained in-state abortion providers.

Whole Woman's Health, which operates two brick-and-mortar clinics and a telemedicine resource that provides abortion pills by mail, was seeing more women cross state lines to access its services even before the Supreme Court overturned the right to terminate pregnancies last June.

"It started when Texas passed its six-week ban in 2021," said founder and CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller. "We started to see people - believe it or not - coming all the way from Texas into Virginia."

That is a distance of about 1,200 miles (2,000km) - and the number of women arriving from other parts of the country has risen by more than 10% in the 11 months since the court's ruling, according to Mrs Miller.

Several have come from Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia - all of which border Virginia and which have outlawed nearly all abortions.