USA TODAY International Edition
Texas forces women to go distance for an abortion
State cuts number of clinics, making choice a matter of miles
None of the obstacles Texas placed in her way was going to keep Veronica from driving 125 miles to her appointment at Whole Woman’s Health clinic Friday. With her 3- year- old and 1year- old in tow, she was determined to get an abortion.
The state didn’t make it easy. There used to be a clinic 50 miles away in Corpus Christi. But Texas — which she likens to a “big bully” — is more than halfway to its goal of reducing from 44 to 10 the number of licensed clinics in the nation’s second- largest state.
In the end, Veronica — who did not want her last name used because of the personal nature of the procedure — came up short of money and postponed her trip. She doesn’t blame the state for that, but she’s concerned about the law’s restrictions nonetheless.
“It is a hassle and a struggle,” she says. “If we get rid of all the clinics, what choice do you have?”
Texas’ abortion law — which the Supreme Court this month agreed to review early next year — unquestionably has made abortions harder to come by.
The first closings put at least 300 miles between Lisa Marii Montes’ home in Midland and the nearest clinics in El Paso, Fort Worth and San Antonio. En route to Whole Woman’s Health last month, she had a change of heart.
“It’s a costly procedure as it is, so adding on travel costs and accommodations is inconvenient,” Montes says. “If it were more accessible, it may have made a difference in my decision.”
The stories of both women illustrate the human stakes involved in the most important abortion case to come before the high court in a quarter- century.
Restrictions imposed by Texas legislators in 2013 and upheld by a federal appeals court in June will test how far states can go under a 1992 Supreme Court decision, which upheld the right to abortion but allowed limits that do not impose an “undue burden.” Texas’ limits require clinics to meet tougher building standards and doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals.
The law has reduced from 44 to 19 the number of abortion clinics in Texas, where about 60,000 women seek abortions every year. Nearly 300,000 women live more than 200 miles from the nearest clinic. The Whole Woman’s Health clinic, its walls a soothing mauve and rooms named for female icons such as Indira Gandhi, Amelia Earhart and Rosie the Riveter, would be forced to close. The surgical center around the corner — where state Health Department officials arrived unannounced last Wednesday for an inspection — would survive.
That’s a problem for low- income Latina women in the Rio Grande Valley, whose only remaining clinic in McAllen would have just one semi- retired doctor licensed to perform abortions. A trip to San Antonio would take four hours and include a Border Patrol checkpoint that undocumented workers fear crossing.
It’s also a problem for women who live in Texas’ vast western frontier and Panhandle, whose choice would be driving hundreds of miles east to San Antonio or Fort Worth or getting their abortions in neighboring New Mexico because the lone El Paso clinic would be shuttered.
“It’s difficult for patients to navigate this network of sham laws that Texas has created,” says Bhavik Kumar, 30, a doctor who shuttles between the Whole Woman’s Health clinics in San Antonio and Fort Worth, sometimes performing as many as three dozen abortions in a day.
Abortion opponents dispute claims that their goal is to shut down as many clinics as possible and make it more difficult for women to access legal abortions.
“We realize that there’s not a realistic way to ban abortions,” says Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life. Given that, he says, “we believe that the states should protect the health and safety of women who are undergoing abortions.”
Andrea Ferrigno, vice president of Whole Woman’s Health, says requiring hospital- like settings isn’t necessary for most early- term abortions.
“An abortion experience doesn’t have to be an ugly, awful experience,” Ferrigno says. “It can be one of the most empowering experiences a woman has.”
The law has reduced from 44 to 19 the number of abortion clinics in Texas, where about 60,000 women seek abortions every year.