Pregnant Texans flood out-of-state abortion clinics foreshadowing future if Supreme Court ends Roe

AUSTIN: You arrive every day. Some come in cars full of luggage and families. Others drive alone for hours, hoping to make the round trip trip in one day so they can get home in time to pick up their children from school.

When Texas passed the nation’s strictest ban on abortion in September, it sparked an exodus. Texans flock to clinics across the country for abortions and travel to states as far as Washington and Maine.

Scheduled parenting clinics in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas saw 40 Texans last fall.

Since September of this year there have been more than 800.

The surge in demand from the second largest federal state is burdening the supply in the entire region. In some clinics, the waiting time for an appointment is up to three or four weeks, a delay that not only burdens the patient emotionally, but also increases the costs of the procedure. Texans are also ousting locals, some of whom go to other states for an abortion themselves.

What will happen suggests the future should the US Supreme Court withdraw five decades of abortion law. When Roe. vs. Wade Falls, abortion is expected to be banned in two dozen states in the South and Midwest.

“People will look to get care in other areas,” said Emily Wales, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which has clinics in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. “The people who have the resources are looked after. Those who do not will be forced to either attempt to terminate the pregnancy themselves or to carry a pregnancy against their will. “

Court decision

The US Supreme Court is expected to rule shortly on Texas’s six-week abortion ban, which has attempted to evade legal scrutiny by outsourcing enforcement to private individuals.

But the case that is likely to determine the fate of abortion law across the country comes from Mississippi. A state law banning abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy is a direct challenge to Roe, which guarantees the right to have an abortion until a fetus is viable outside the uterus, or approximately 23 weeks.

A verdict from the court is not expected before June. However, in oral hearings on Wednesday, the conservative majority in the court signaled that they wanted to withdraw the right to abortion.

“Why should this court be the arbitrator and not Congress, the state legislatures, the state supreme courts, the people able to resolve this?” Asked Judge Brett Kavanaugh. “And in Mississippi and New York there will be different answers, in Alabama different than in California.”

These geographical differences are already clearly visible.

If the court overturns Roe, 26 states are sure or likely that abortion will be banned, effectively cutting off access across much of the South and Midwest.

Texas already has a law that bans abortion if Roe falls. Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma have similar triggering laws, so New Mexico is the only neighboring state willing to let this happen.

“The effect is for generations”

The changing map would force Texans to travel even further for an abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, which is committed to promoting reproductive health and rights, estimates the average travel time to be 542 miles in one direction – roughly the distance from Dallas to Kansas City.

The burden will fall most heavily on colored communities, rural Texans and low-income women, who, according to experts, are already facing the greatest barriers to accessing abortion.

Traveling abroad is costly, requires time off from work, and can entail the need for childcare. A majority of Texans seeking an abortion are already parents, state statistics show.

“These types of bans have an impact on generations,” said Adrienne Mansanares, chief experience officer for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which has offices in Colorado, New Mexico and Las Vegas. “I think of the person who couldn’t have an abortion because they can’t afford it, have no access to resources, and are now pushing another generation into poverty.”

Several organizations are helping meet the cost of Texans in need of an abortion, but some have said they can’t meet all of the demand.

At a news conference last month, Fund Texas Choice executive director Anna Rupani said nearly all of the group’s clients are now leaving the state for abortions. The average cost of travel, food, and housing ranges from $ 800 to $ 1,000, Rupani said. And often they cover more than 1,100 miles on journeys of at least two days.

After Texas law went into effect, a study found that abortions in Texas fell by 50%. Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, said the decline wasn’t as high as the group had hoped.

“It’s a shame women feel the need to travel for an abortion,” he said.

Domino effect

Clinics in other states are struggling with the influx from Texas. In 2019, Texas had 57,275 abortions, statistics show, nearly three times the number of procedures performed in neighboring Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico combined.

Some abortion clinics in these states are adding more hours and staff but still cannot keep up with demand.

“We have patients calling us asking to stay longer, opening earlier, and we’ve done what we can,” said Wales. “But there is a limit to how many patients we can physically see at the same time. It was quite heartbreaking for our employees to know that they weren’t meeting the need. “

The Trust Women’s clinics in Oklahoma and Kansas are fully booked for three to four weeks, said communications director Zack Gingrich-Gaylord. The number of Oklahoma patients showing up at the Wichita clinic is also increasing, he said.

Texans don’t just travel to neighboring states for abortions, said Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund. They travel to where flights are cheap or where they have family and friends.

A recent study by the Guttmacher Institute found an increase in the number of Texans seeking abortions in at least a dozen states, including California, Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington.

While most Texas patients head to Planned Parenthood’s health center in Albuquerque, Mansanares said the group’s clinic near the Denver airport has also seen a big surge.

Texas patients are showing up at Whole Woman’s Health clinics in Maryland, Minnesota and Virginia, said President and CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller.

“An abortion ban does nothing to prevent the need for an abortion. It doesn’t reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies, ”she said. “It just prevents people in our own Texas communities from receiving safe care from trained professionals.”

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