New York City has long been a haven for people who want an abortion, and new city programs and policies aim to make sure it remains one since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade and tossed abortion regulation back to the states.
In 1973, before Roe legalized abortion nationwide, New York was the only state that generally allowed abortions without a residency requirement or medical restrictions before fetal viability, according to the Guttmacher Institute. A year earlier — 1972 — more than 100,000 women traveled to New York City for a legal abortion.
“New York wasn’t convenient, but it was the only option in the continental United States,” said Mary Ziegler, who is the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis and a leading historian on abortion in the United States.
