Courtesy to Google Images
Texas State Representative Jessica Farrar’s (D) response to the recent ruling on H.B. 2 and how it really is a undue burden to women’s health.
Last summer, the Texas Legislature passed a highly restrictive omnibus abortion bill. Proponents of the bill claimed that the bill’s provisions would benefit women’s health, but in reality they make it much harder for Texas women to access a safe and legal abortion. The bill bans abortions after 20 weeks, places restrictions on medical abortions, requires that physicians performing abortions have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles, and requires that abortion facilities have the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs). While the ASC requirement does not go into effect until September, the rest of the bill has been implemented, despite an ongoing legal challenge to the law.
Texas’s law impedes a woman’s ability to make her own personal medical decisions. It makes no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. In particular, the 20-week ban fails to adequately account for severe fetal anomalies, typically not discovered until close to the 20th week. None of the measures were prescribed by medical professionals. In fact, the Texas Medical Association, Texas Hospital Association, and American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists all opposed the legislation.
This law is forcing clinics across Texas to close. By September, the number of licensed abortion providers is expected to drop to six. This Texas Tribune infographic illustrates the changes in clinic numbers and locations over time. These closures combine with the sonogram law (requiring a 24-hour waiting period between a sonogram and procedure) and the medical abortion restrictions (requiring separate appointments to take each of the two required doses of medication), to significantly inhibit access to abortion services. Depending on a woman’s situation, she may incur travel and lodging costs, childcare costs, time off of work, and increased expense for the procedure. Each additional hurdle makes it more difficult for a woman to access a safe and legal abortion.
The desperate situations brought about by this bill will lead to drastic measures. Texas is already seeing hints of a return to a pre-Roe world. For example, Dr. Lester Minto, who owns and operates a clinic affected by the law, lacks admitting privileges and can no longer perform abortions. He explained in an interview with Slate that women have begun buying misoprostol, which works as an abortifacient, at Mexican pharmacies or flea markets, if they are unable to cross the border. Dr. Minto keeps his clinic open to perform “miscarriage management” if something goes wrong when taking that pill.
Despite the numerous obstacles to a safe and legal abortion and the risk this places on women’s health, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld the medical abortion and admitting privileges provisions of Texas’s law with one limited exception: in the case of abortion providers who “timely” applied for admitting privileges but have not heard back from the hospital, the requirement cannot be enforced.
The legal challenge is predicted to go to the Supreme Court, but in the meantime, instead of focusing on laws that endanger women’s lives and health, Texas should focus on education and access for reproductive health services for men and women. Doing so would actually reduce the need for abortion services.