Homework 3

Making the Pudding's Viz Interactive

Breaking down the geography of the Puddings story on driving times to abortion clinics across the country.

By Kasturi Pananjady

Published September 9, 2019

The Pudding did a cool thing and analyzed driving times to abortion clinics across the country. On first glance though, it looked like they'd made a population map, although the geographical data got more interesting as we progressed further along in a pregnancy.

I decided to keep the maps and just snapshot three distinct timeframes from the slider. On the mobile view, this shows up as histograms that show the dispairty between regions of the States. I classified the regions, perhaps crudely, as simply West, Northeast, Midwest and South. But these categories illustrate the basic trend. In my annotations on the map, I tried to put in the rest of the context from the Pudding story about individual cities. (Those city-level labellings don't exist in the mobile versions.)

Driving times to abortion clinics at 8 weeks of pregnancy

The Northeast

is consistently

good at providing

speedy access!

Cities like Seattle

do pretty well no

matter how far along

the pregnancy is.

Residents of

cities like

El Paso and Springfield

don’t have it as easy.

Legend

<1

12 +

Source: Pudding

Driving to abortion clinics at 8 weeks of pregnancy

Consistently

good access in

the Northeast

Big cities like

Seattle are accessible

even at 12, 20 weeks

Cities like El

Paso or

Springfield

have it rough

Legend

<1

12 +

Source: Pudding

Cities on the coasts have more

accessible clinics than

those in the Midwest or the South.

Source: Pudding

100

80

Driving times to abortion clinics

 

in the Midwest at

 

8 weeks pregnant

60

40

20

100

80

Driving times to

 

abortion clinics

 

in the South at

 

8 weeks pregnant

60

40

20

100

Driving times

 

to abortion clinics

 

in the West at

 

8 weeks pregnant

80

60

40

20

100

Driving times to

 

abortion clinics

 

in the Northeast at

 

8 weeks pregnant

80

60

40

20

Driving times to abortion clinics at 12 weeks of pregnancy

The Northeast

remains consistently

good at providing

speedy access, with

hardly any change!

In smaller cities

like Boise, Idaho,

the roundtrip stays

steady at <1 at 12 weeks

Inaccessibility

intensifies in the

West and Midwest

Legend

<1

12 +

Source: Pudding

Driving times to abortion clinics at 12 weeks pregnant

The Northeast

remains consistently

good at providing

speedy access, with

hardly any change!

In Boise, Idaho,

the roundtrip stays

steady at <1

at 12 weeks

Inaccessibility

intensifies in parts of

the West and Midwest

Legend

<1

12 +

Source: Pudding

Cities on the coasts have more

accessible clinics than

those in the Midwest or the South.

Source: Pudding

100

80

Driving times to abortion clinics

 

in the Midwest at

 

12 weeks pregnant

60

40

20

100

Driving times to

 

abortion clinics

 

in the South at

 

12 weeks pregnant

80

60

40

20

Driving times

 

to abortion clinics

 

in the West at

 

12 weeks pregnant

100

80

60

40

20

100

Driving times to

 

abortion clinics

 

in the Northeast at

 

12 weeks pregnant

80

60

40

20

Driving times to abortion clinics at 20 weeks of pregnancy

Cities like

Boston, New

York and Philly

are relatively

unaffected

In smaller cities

like Boise, Idaho,

escalates at 20 weeks

Five cities in Texas

in this area

are abortion-inaccessible

but difficulty does not

increase drastically with the extent of pregnancy

Legend

<1

12 +

Source: Pudding

Driving times to abortion clinics at 20 weeks

Cities like

Boston, New

York and Philly

are relatively

unaffected

In smaller cities

like Boise, Idaho,

escalates at

20 weeks

Difficulty does

not increase

drastically with the

extent of pregnancy

Legend

<1

12 +

Source: Pudding

Cities on the coasts have more

accessible clinics than

those in the Midwest or the South.

Source: Pudding

100

80

Driving times to abortion clinics

 

in the Midwest at

 

20 weeks pregnant

60

40

20

100

Driving times to

 

abortion clinics

 

in the South at

 

20 weeks pregnant

80

60

40

20

Driving times

 

to abortion clinics

 

in the West at

 

20 weeks pregnant

100

80

60

40

20

100

Driving times to

 

abortion clinics

 

in the Northeast at

 

20 weeks pregnant

80

60

40

20

There are two main takeaways — it's hard to get timely access to abortions depending on which region you're from. And it's parrticularly hard if you're a way into your pregnancy, though major metropolitan areas do ok on this front.