Post-roe Texas may cause GOP regret

The Texas law making abortions illegal after six weeks of pregnancy (before many women know they are pregnant) is now fully in effect. There are no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, though there is one for women at risk of “substantial impairment of major bodily function.” Goodness knows what that means and how doctors will calculate the odds that a medically advisable abortion will land them in prison.

The dreadful consequences that will follow the law’s implementation underscore the state’s blatant lack of respect for women’s lives and decisions. They might also be an indication that the forced-birth crowd has overplayed its hand.

Abortions are all but impossible to obtain in Texas now. Whole Woman’s Health, one of the largest abortion providers in the state, announced it is closing its four clinics in Mcallen, Fort Worth, Mckinney and Austin and decamping to New Mexico, where abortion is legal.

In New Mexico, existing clinics have experienced bedlam as women not only from Texas but Oklahoma and other Southwest states with abortion bans flock to get care, resulting in a backlog of four weeks for an appointment. So women will be having abortions later in pregnancies thanks to the forcedbirth law.

The Texas Tribune reports that “those four weeks could mean they would become ineligible for abortion medication in lieu of a procedure, or they could have to spend two days at the Albuquerque clinic instead of one.” If one lives in, say, Houston, the drive may take more than 10 hours, and with the cost of gas spiking, it could be prohibitively expensive.

The Tribune captures the lived experience of women in Texas with snippets from the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health in Albuquerque:

“She’s under eight weeks, for an appointment at 8 a.m.,” one clinic employee whispered to her coworker while on the phone with a Texas patient. “But the latest flight out [of Albuquerque] is 5:25 p.m. — do you think she would make that flight?”

Another employee walked in to tell the receptionists not to count one woman who was supposed to be in the clinic about an hour earlier as a noshow. She was on the way, the staffer said, still driving in from Oklahoma . . . .

“If they’d just been able to go to Dallas, and they live near Dallas, they could go tomorrow,” said Dr. Amber Truehart, the clinic’s medical director. “But they have to figure out how to travel here and get child care and funding, and all of that stuff is delaying them.”

Considering that at least some patients have been victims of rape or incest or are otherwise suffering from medical complications, the ordeal seems even more barbaric.

The implications are profound for the most vulnerable women. If doctors and nurses are unsure about the legality of a medically advisable abortion, a woman carrying a nonviable fetus may have to go through the agony and emotional torment of giving birth. And given the statistics on maternal mortality and complications, Black and Hispanic women forced to continue their pregnancies will die in disproportionate numbers.

If forced-birth activists thought this situation would be popular, they have greatly miscalculated. A new University of Texas/texas Politics Project Poll finds only 37% of the state’s residents support the new law; 54% oppose it. Contrary to the new law, the poll reports, only 8% and 13% of Texas voters would ban access to abortion in the cases of rape and incest, respectively.

Well over half favor access to abortion for women who are not married and do not want to marry, are poor and cannot afford more children, or are married and do not want more children. Texas provides no such exceptions to its ban.

Meanwhile, Texas Gov.

Greg Abbott, R, a champion of forced birth, saw his lead in the gubernatorial race drop to six percentage points. Nearly 60% of residents say Texas is on the wrong track, up eight points since April and a new high since the poll began in 2009.

If one were to invent a regime in which pregnant women were economically, emotionally and physically abused in ways no man would ever tolerate, you would be hard-pressed to come up with a better example than Texas. It’s what happens when women are not treated as full citizens able to make decisions for themselves.