Post-Roe babies likely to test Texas
Some anti-abortion adherents say state unprepared for care
ARGYLE, Texas — Two days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a 27-year-old woman delivered her fourth child, a boy she named Cason. Born after his mother fled from domestic abuse and was denied an abortion, he is among the first of many post-Roe babies expected in Texas.
“I love my kids and I feel like I’m a really good mom,” said Cason’s mother, who asked to be identified by her first initial, T. “But due to this pregnancy, I couldn’t provide for them.”
One in 10 people of reproductive age in America lives in Texas, which will soon join half of all the states in outlawing almost all abortions. Texas’ conservative leadership has spent decades narrowing abortion access while cutting social spending and publicly funded health care. Now, even some anti-abortion adherents say their state is woefully unprepared for a likely surge in births among poor women.
The overturning of Roe “creates the sense of urgency that now will create, hopefully, the resources. But unfortunately, there’s that gap,” said Aubrey Schlackman, founder of Blue Haven Ranch, an anti-abortion nonprofit that is providing housing and other assistance for T.’s family.
Texas is one of the most dangerous states in the nation to have a baby. The state’s maternal mortality rate is one of the worst in the country, with Black women making up a disproportionate share of deaths. The state’s infant mortality rate, at more than 5 deaths per 1,000 births in 2020, translates into nearly 2,000 infant deaths annually.
Texas opted not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which helped lead to hospital closures and the formation of rural health care “deserts,” where obstetricians are scarce and prenatal care scarcer still. More than 25% of women of childbearing age are uninsured, the highest rate in the nation. Medicaid covers low-income women through pregnancy and for two months postpartum, compared with 12 months in most states.
Last September, Texas passed Senate Bill 8, banning abortions for patients with detectable embryonic cardiac activity, which generally begins at about six weeks.
Three years ago, T. was a bookkeeper for a chain of fitness centers. At $36 an hour, it was the best-paying job she had ever held. She was proud to become her family’s main breadwinner
after her longtime partner lost his construction job during the pandemic. But early in her pregnancy with Cason, she developed complications and had to quit her job.
Late last year, they moved in with the mother of her partner. The couple were unloading their belongings, with their infant daughter in her stroller nearby, when “he snapped on me,” T. said. Her partner choked her, she said, until she lost consciousness. When she was revived by a stranger she had trouble speaking, and a ring of bruises circled her neck. Terrified for her children, she fled the next morning to a shelter for domestic violence victims, she said.
She said she had never sought an abortion before. But the prospect of raising four young children on her own, and of giving birth alone, filled T. with desperation.
She agonized about the needs of her three children, and about sacrifices.
“It was a very difficult decision, but I felt like it was a smart one for me,” T. said.
Her sister drove her to Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center, an abortion provider in Dallas. But Texas had just enacted Senate Bill 8, and the providers told T. that she was about seven weeks pregnant — too far along for an abortion in Texas. Could she travel to New Mexico? In the waiting room, T. sobbed. The trip was impossible. She had no money, and so few child care options that she had brought her baby daughter with her to the appointment. She didn’t know about medication abortion.
T. rejoined her sister in the parking lot. She was sitting in the car, distraught, when an anti-abortion “sidewalk counselor” approached.
“We can help you,’ ” the
sidewalk counselor told her, T. recalled.
“I just started crying,” T. said, “in a sense of relief.”
The next day the woman T. had met in the parking lot guided her to Birth Choice, an anti-abortion pregnancy resource center in the same complex as the abortion provider.
Some anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers have come under scrutiny for misleading or misinforming women seeking abortion care. But in that moment, “They asked me the perfect questions,” T. said. “Am I OK? Are my kids doing OK? What did I need?
“Mind you, I had left everything,” she said. “They provided me with everything right there: baby bag, diapers, formula, clothes for me. They even gave me a couple of little clothes for my daughter and a toy,” T. said.
“Then my counselor comes back and says, ‘I found you a place.’ ”
The place was Blue Haven Ranch in Argyle, about 40 miles northwest of Dallas.
Blue Haven provides housing, help with bills, job training, and financial and other counseling for a up to a year or more after delivery for pregnant women with existing children. Among Americans who seek abortion care, 60% are already mothers, and half have two or more children. Most are in their late 20s, and poor.
Schlackman, 34, a former dental hygienist, evangelical Christian and mother of two, founded Blue Haven in 2020.
She grew up believing women seek abortion care out of convenience. “Now I can understand why they would choose it,” she said.
Schlackman requires women to attend group informational sessions with a strong religious component in a community church on Monday nights. Blue Haven does not seek money from the government or anyone that might question its religious approach. It takes in donations from abortion rights supporters as well as opponents, Schlackman said.
Blue Haven supports five families with 12 on a waiting list. The cost is about $2,500 per family per month for housing and utilities, plus gas and unexpected household expenses.
Families live in rented apartments. Schlackman and her husband, Bryan, have plans to buy land outside Denton, Texas, and build a compound with small homes, a meeting house and group kitchen, plus open spaces.
Standing in the field where she envisions the houses, Schlackman estimated she would need to raise $13 million for the land, construction and three years’ operating funds. After Roe was overturned, Blue Haven received $25,000 in donations in two days.