OKLAHOMA CITY – On a windy Tuesday morning, the parking lot in front of a small brick building in southern Oklahoma City filled up quickly. The first to arrive just before 8 a.m., a red truck, was from Texas. Likewise the second and the third.
The building houses one of Oklahoma’s four abortion clinics, and at least two-thirds of the proposed patients are now from Texas. So many that it is trying to hire more staff and doctors to keep up. The increase is the result of a new law in Texas prohibiting abortion after about six weeks, a very early stage of pregnancy. As soon as the measure went into effect this month, Texans started traveling elsewhere, and Oklahoma, near Dallas, has become a major travel destination.
“We had each line lit for eight hours,” said Jennifer Reince, who operates the phones at the Trust Women Oklahoma City clinic’s front desk, describing the first week the measure was in effect.
The ramifications of the new law are profound: Texans with unwanted pregnancies have had to make quick decisions, and some have opted for long-distance abortions. As clinics in the surrounding states fill up, appointments are made for later appointments, making the procedures more costly. Other women have to carry their pregnancies to term.
Marva Sadler, senior director of clinical services at Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas, said she believes many patients are unable to arrange childcare or take time off work without their job to lose to travel to other states.
“I think the majority of women are being condemned to be parents,” she said.
The bill is the latest in a series of successes by the anti-abortion movement, which has been pushing for more conservative judges and control of state parliaments for years. Now the Supreme Court is preparing to open an abortion case – the first to be heard in court with all three Conservative appointees of former President Donald J. Trump – that has the potential to completely lift federal abortion protection.
In Texas, the new state law has effectively achieved this, at least for the time being.
Samerah was just five weeks pregnant when she lay on an exam table in Houston for an ultrasound. It was August 31, the day before the law came into force. She had heard about it on the news and knew that abortions were prohibited after heart activity was detected. But when the doctor did the ultrasound, there was no sound and she was told to come back for her procedure the next day.
When she came back and was again in a darkened room, staring up at a group of paper dancers hanging from the ceiling, the doctor came to a different conclusion.
“He said ‘take a deep breath’ and budoom, budoom, budoom, all you hear is a heartbeat,” said Samerah, who is 22 years old, and I just yelled and yelled and yelled. “
She went into the hallway, her mind racing, and saw other women there too.
“We all just cried in the hallway and asked: ‘What should we do?'”
For many women in their position, the answer was to get an abortion in another state. About half of the patients at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, LA are now from Texas, up from a fifth before the law. At Little Rock Family Planning Services in Arkansas, Texas, patients now make up 19 percent of the case number, compared with less than 2 percent in August.
Oklahoma doesn’t require two trips to a clinic for an abortion in most cases, so this has been a common choice. Trust Women had 11 patients in Texas in August; it has 110 so far in September. The patients come from Galveston and Corpus Christi. Some drive through the night in time for a morning appointment. The high demand from Texas has meant that the clinic’s schedule has been full for weeks. Last week the earliest dates were for mid-October.
Samerah, who asked not to publish her last name, arrived last Monday from Beaumont, a town near Houston, where she lives with her partner and two-year-old son.
The news of her pregnancy, she said, threatened the life they had built for him.
Her financial situation had only recently stabilized. She got a job in customer service. Her partner was driving a delivery truck for a medical service. They moved from his family home to their own apartment. Your son has his own room. She bought new furniture: a sitting area and a bed.
“This was the first time we’d bought a brand new, ready-to-use mattress, not from Facebook or something,” she said.
She took pride in giving her son attention, toys, a stable home, things she said she never had herself. But the two of them couldn’t afford that. “I don’t want to be these parents,” said Samerah, whose mother was a teenager when she was born. “I don’t want to drag my child into something I can’t afford to take care of because they don’t deserve it. I grew up in this reality. And I know what it does to people. “
Samerah said she had had an abortion the year after her son was born for similar reasons. She said she made an appointment for an IUD immediately after her procedure on Tuesday.
As states place more and more restrictions on abortion, it is increasingly poor women who have to grapple with its effects. Half of American women who had an abortion in 2014 lived in poverty, twice as much as in 1994, when about a quarter of women who had abortions had low incomes, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group advocating for establish the right to abortion. Theories as to why this is happening include demographic shifts, increased abortion funding for low-income women and higher-income women who have more access to highly effective contraception.
The longer women have to wait, the more expensive their procedures become. Abortions at Trust Women cost between $ 650 for earlier stages and $ 2,350 for later stages. Financial support is also possible.
Sarah, who works for a roofing company, found out on August 23 that she was 13 weeks pregnant. But then the law went into effect and she went to look for a clinic in another state.
“It was just a scramble to take care of it, especially since I was running out of time,” said Sarah, 21, who asked not to reveal her last name to protect her privacy.
On September 20, she finally had her abortion at the Oklahoma City Clinic. Her partner, a police officer, shared the cost and drove them the three hours from Dallas, where they live.
Understand the Texas Abortion Act
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The citizens, not the state, will enforce the law. The law represents ordinary citizens – including those outside of Texas – and allows them to sue clinics and others who violate the law. It will give them at least $ 10,000 per illegal abortion if they are successful.
She said she had been alone for some time. Her mother died in a car accident when she was 9 years old and her father died of cancer when she was 19 – she said she couldn’t feed a baby.
“I’d have to put my life on hold,” she said. “I don’t know if I could go back to school.”
Sarah had never been pregnant before, but she said she knew her decision was the right one. Still, it was difficult. In the weeks she waited for her appointment, she said it was impossible not to think about what was growing inside of her. The pregnancy confirmation ultrasound she received at a center run by an anti-abortion group was done by a woman who typed “hello mom” and “hello it’s me” on the screen and Sarah den Gave expression.
“It’s hard not having the instinct to bond with him,” Sarah said. “And just having to remind myself of it every day is not possible. Like it’s just not the time for you. That was the hardest part. “
Trust Women also attracts anti-abortion groups. An RV run by anti-abortion activists promoting free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds is sometimes parked across the street from the Rancho Village Food Mart.
Raymundo Marquez, 23, a cashier there, said his brother, a shopkeeper, allowed it. But Mr. Marquez has conflicting feelings. He thinks abortion is wrong: when his girlfriend got pregnant in high school, she didn’t think about it. But he said it’s hard to judge anyone else for it because he knows there are children who are homeless and neglected.
“It’s sad both ways,” he said.
A demonstrator appeared on Tuesday afternoon, standing upright in a green floral jacket and green shoes, praying and looking at the security booth of the clinic. Inside, Louis Padilla, the security guard, was watching them. She’s a regular and sometimes he goes outside to discuss her.
Mr Padilla said he was a Catholic and a Republican, but he was won over to the clinic after a while. Every woman has her own story, he said, and who are men like him to judge them? He mows the clinic lawn, hoists his flag, and sometimes repairs equipment because mechanics refuse to come to an abortion clinic. He even bought a drone with his own money to watch the protesters outside.
The situation in Texas can be temporary. A hearing on October 1st will give opponents of the law another chance to convince a judge to suspend the law. But there are other restrictions. Oklahoma has five, including a law that requires certification of abortion providers Obstetrician. Should it come into effect on November 1st as planned, four of the eight doctors licensed by Trust Women would no longer be able to do this.
Samerah made it to the Oklahoma Clinic with the help of grants that covered airline tickets for her and her son. Her abortion was also covered. But her partner had to pay for his way there himself. He was fired, she said when he asked for free time. And she lost her salary for several days.
She doesn’t think the people who passed the law considered the consequences for women like her. These officials, she said, go to their jobs in “their car that has no problems starting with a tire that is not flat”.
In the meantime, she and her partner and son will be returning to Texas as they really fear that they may not be able to pay the October rent.
“I have to go home and find out what to do next month, and next month is in a couple of weeks. What should I do, you know? “
Clare Töniskoetter contributed to the reporting. Sheelagh McNeill contributed to the research.
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