“As many as 240,000 Texas women have tried to end a pregnancy on their own, without medical assistance”.
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Poverty, geography, and rapidly dwindling access to abortion care are driving an increasing share of Texan women seeking abortion to self-induce, according to a first-of-its-kind study of the prevalence of self-induced abortion from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project. The most common method has to be a pill called misoprostol that is marketed as an ulcer medication in Mexico, and other Central and South American countries.
The US Supreme Court has rejected an anti-abortion group’s appeal to force the federal government to disclose confidential records about a $1 million contract it made with Planned Parenthood in New Hampshire in 2011.
Under the law – Texas House Bill 2 – abortion doctors are required to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of a clinic, and abortion clinics across the state are required to meet the same medical standards as “ambulatory” or outpatient surgery centers (ASCs). If the justices uphold the lower court’s support for the strict abortion provisions, the number of abortion clinics in Texas will be reduced to fewer than 10. A Supreme Court decision on the Texas law would have immediate consequences for abortion clinics in seven other states: Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wisconsin have all passed similar laws.
Planned Parenthood, for its millions in marketing and meticulous corporate message control, is having a harder time passing itself off as the tender-hearted, indispensable women’s health champion.
If Texas wins in the high court, “it will give additional encouragement to states to follow Texas’ lead”, Burke said. Vanessa had three children during a time at which all the clinics in the region had been forced to close, DeFrates said. Planned Parenthood says that’s an attempt to limit health care resources for women, too. The report points to previous studies that have explored the correlation between a rise in abortion restrictions and the prevalence of self-induced abortions. Most people thought we were well past the days of women taking matters into their own hands, but laws that make it impossible to get safe and legal abortion are taking us backwards. Often, the logistical factors intermingled with poverty or feelings of shame. The Supreme Court now has the opportunity to confirm that states have a legitimate and compelling interest in better ensuring the safety and health of women who enter abortion clinics.
“There was also the fact that I’m doing it at home, we’re not-though we have all of the information as to how much bleeding is too much bleeding”, one 24-year-old said, “there’s always that slight uncertainty of like I don’t really know what I’m doing”.
Still, women might prefer that uncertainty to a long and expensive trek.
Justices have accepted an appeal from abortion provider Whole Woman’s Health, which operates clinics in Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico and Maryland. Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, that number could plummet even further-to ten.
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“When the leading medical groups like the AMA oppose these laws, you have to ask yourself what they are really about”, said Jennifer Dalven of the American Civil Liberties Union.
