Texans flock to out-of-state clinics
Oklahoma site reports surge after neighbor’s abortion law
OKLAHOMA CITY — A small building in Oklahoma City’s southside houses one of Oklahoma’s four abortion clinics, and at least two-thirds of its scheduled patients now come from Texas.
So many, in fact, that it is trying to hire more staff members and doctors to keep up. The increase is the result of a new law in Texas banning abortions after about six weeks, a very early stage of pregnancy.
As soon as the measure took effect this month, Texans started traveling elsewhere. Oklahoma, close to Dallas, has become a major destination.
About half the patients at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport are now from Texas, up from about one-fifth before the law. At Little Rock Family Planning Services, Texas patients make up 19% of the caseload now, compared with less than 2% in August.
“We had every line lit up for eight hours straight,” said Jennifer Reince, who works the front desk phones at the clinic, Trust Women Oklahoma City, describing the first week the measure was in force.
The effects of the new law have been profound: Texans with unwanted pregnancies have been forced to make decisions quickly, and some have opted to travel long distances for abortions.
As clinics in surrounding states fill up, appointments are being scheduled for later dates, making the procedures more costly. Other women are having to carry their pregnancies to term.
Marva Sadler, senior director of clinic services at Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas, said she believed that many patients were not able to arrange child care or take time off work without losing their jobs to travel to other states.
“I think a majority of women are being sentenced to being parents,” she said.
The law is the latest in a string of successes by the anti-abortion movement, which for years has pushed for more conservative judges and control over state legislatures. Now the Supreme Court is preparing to take up an abortion case — the first to be argued before the court with all three of former President Donald Trump’s conservative appointees — that has the potential to remove federal protection for abortion altogether.
In Texas, the new state law has effectively accomplished that, at least for now.
Samerah, who requested that her last name not be published, was just five weeks pregnant when she lay on an examining table in Houston to get an ultrasound. It was Aug. 31, the day before the law went into effect.
She had heard about it on the news and knew that it banned abortions after cardiac activity was detected.
But when the doctor performed the ultrasound, there was no sound. She was told to come back the next day for her procedure.
When she returned and lay again in a darkened room, staring up at a set of paper dancers hanging from the ceiling, the doctor got a different result.
“He said, ‘Take a deep breath,’ and budoom, budoom, budoom, all you hear is a heartbeat,” said Samerah, who is 22. “In that same breath, all the things I had been crossing my fingers about just came out, and I just bawled and bawled and bawled.”
She walked into the hallway, her mind racing, and saw other women there too.
“We were all just crying in the hallway like, ‘What are we going to do?’”
The answer for many women in her position has been to race to get an abortion in a different state.
As states pass more abortion restrictions, it increasingly is poor women who must grapple with their effects.
Half of American women who got an abortion in 2014 lived in poverty, double the share from 1994, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
Theories for why include demographic change, increased funding for abortions for low-income women, and higher-income women having more access to highly effective contraception.
The longer women have to wait, the more expensive their procedures become. Abortions at Trust Women range in cost from $650 for earlier stages to $2,350 for later stages. Financial assistance is also available.
The situation in Texas may be temporary. A hearing Oct. 1 will give the law’s opponents another chance to convince a judge to suspend it. But other restrictions are looming.
In Oklahoma, there are five, including a law that requires abortion providers to be board-certified obstetricians. If it takes effect as scheduled Nov. 1, four of the eight doctors licensed to work at Trust Women could no longer do so.
About half the patients at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport are now from Texas, up from about one-fifth before the law. At Little Rock Family Planning Services, Texas patients make up 19% of the caseload now, compared with less than 2% in August.