Old faces of Cuba
JR’s series “The Wrinkles of the City,” which he began in Cartagena, Spain, has also appeared in Los Angeles and Shanghai. More recently he and collaborator José Parlá took to Havana, where they bedecked the old communist capital with the faces of dozens of Cuban Revolution survivors wearing expressions of deep-creased sanguinity. “The Wrinkles of the City, Havana,
Cuba” has been adapted for display at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New York City, where it’s on display until July 12.
If Roe were overturned
New York legalized abortion in 1970, and soon became by far the top destination for out-of-state women who wanted abortions but couldn’t get them locally. The researchers, who presented their work at the recent annual meeting of the Population Association of America, found that pre-Roe, abortion rates fell 11.9 percent for every 100 miles a woman lived from New York. This corresponds with the intuitive idea that the farther women have to travel for abortion care, the less likely they are to have an abortion performed.
The researchers then used that data to run through a hypothetical scenario in which the Supreme Court overturned Roe. It’s estimated that as many as 31 states would vote to make abortion illegal if that were to happen, and if they did, the average distance a woman would have to travel to have an abortion would increase from 30 miles to 187 miles. Merging that with the historical data from New York, the researchers calculated that the national abortion rate would fall 14.9 percent and the number of live births in the United States would increase 4.2 percent.
The researchers note that these would be significant changes, but conclude, “despite the profound impact of overturning Roe, we anticipate that the vast majority of women in states without legal abortion would access services in states where abortion remained accessible.”
Kevin Hartnett is a writer who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich. He can be reached at kshartnett18@gmail.com.