Crossing the line: Texans facing ban at home seek abortions next door

When 30-year-old "F" learned that she was pregnant for the eighth time, she just wanted to cry.

A homemaker dependent on her husband's income, she agonized for three weeks about what to do, but always came to the same conclusion: "I can't have this child."

But then she was hit by a second problem.

F's home state of Texas recently made getting an abortion a lot harder, one of a number of conservative parts of the United States where the political tide has turned against the procedure --despite broad support for abortion rights among the American public.

A new law bans almost all abortions after six weeks, before many women know they're pregnant --meaning that in Texas, terminating a pregnancy often means traveling out of state.

Following Friday's Supreme Court ruling, striking down the national right to an abortion and allowing states to enact tough restrictions or outright bans, that will be the reality for millions more women.

For F, it's a relatively short drive --45 minutes from her El Paso home sits the small New Mexico town of Santa Teresa, where the Women's Reproductive Health Clinic has been operating since 2015 under the state's more liberal laws.

Attacks

Some have travelled much further.

"The hardest part for me was figuring out how I was gonna get here," says Ehrece, a 35-year-old engineer who came more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from Dallas on a journey that ended with a taxi ride.

"I had the cab driver drop me off at the gas station down the street. And then I kind of walked here, so no one would know where I was going."

Ehrece, who is in a stable relationship and says she doesn't want children yet for professional reasons, has good reasons to be cautious.

Texas' new law allows individuals to sue anyone involved --no matter how tangentially-- in an abortion. That includes not only the doctor or nurse who gives care, but even the Uber driver who takes the woman to the clinic.

"They don't make it easy for you," said Emily, a 35-year-old yoga teacher who doesn't want to become a mother.

"You're worried that someone's going to attack you outside the clinic or some nut with a gun is going to come in." 'How many weeks?'

The protesters who gather outside the clinic don't scare owner Dr. Franz Theard.

The 73-year-old obstetrician has been performing abortions since the 1980s; when he began it was amid a wave of violent attacks in the United States that left doctors dead or wounded.

"We've been very fortunate that the state of New Mexico has very liberal laws," he told AFP.

"We have certification for everything. But they're not hounding us every day.

"We have to provide reports in Texas, we have to give a report every month of every patient."

Theard no longer performs surgical abortions, prescribing only abortion by pill: one tablet of Mifepristone, which prevents the pregnancy from progressing, and four tablets of Misoprostol the next day, to induce bleeding.

In the waiting room, assistant Rocio Negrete fields calls from prospective patients.

"How many weeks along are you?" she asks. "We have appointments but we can only see you if it's up to week 10."