Texas, Back-Alley Abortions, and Other Developments in the “War on Women”
BY BILLIE MANDELBAUM
In 2011, there were 44 facilities in Texas where abortions were performed.
Today, only 24 facilities remain. This decline stems from stringent regulations put in place by Texas House Bill 2, which was signed into law last year by Governor Rick Perry. The legislation requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within a 30-mile radius and mandates that all procedures take place in ambulatory surgical centers. To get admitting privileges, doctors must undergo an extensive application process, and many hospitals, citing religious reasons, refuse to even accept applications. Meanwhile, upgrading a clinic to an ambulatory surgical center poses high costs to abortion providers. Facing these logistical and financial challenges, abortion providers have been forced to shut down their clinics.
Whole Women’s Health, a privately-owned women’s health and abortion care organization in Texas, closed two of its clinics in March 2014. In an interview with the New York Times, Amy Hagstorm Miller, the chief executive of Whole Women’s Health, said the closures were due to House Bill 2 provisions.
“It’s heartbreaking for us. It’s been a very difficult decision. I tried everything I can. I just can’t keep the doors open,” Miller said.
Yet at the time of the bill’s passage, Perry praised its merits. “This is an important day for those who support life and for those who support the health of Texas women,” Perry said. “In signing House Bill 2, we celebrate and further cement the foundation on which the culture of life in Texas is built.”
While Perry, Republicans in the state legislature, and pro-life activists argued that the bill would be in the best interest of women’s health, the effects of the bill’s passage prove otherwise. As abortion clinics shutter, women in Texas are becoming the latest casualties in the Right’s “War on Women.” With limited access to abortion services, women are left with few choices but to resort to dangerous abortion practices.
This phenomenon is particularly widespread in southern Texas, in the state’s Rio Grande Valley, a region with 1.3 million residents. With the recent closure of the valley’s only remaining clinic on March 6, there are no longer any abortion providers in the region. This means that female residents of the area seeking an abortion must now make either a 300-mile round trip to Corpus Christi or a 500-mile round trip to San Antonio to reach a clinic. However, given travel costs, the price of the procedure itself, and the demographics of the region—one of the poorest in Texas—such a trip is rarely feasible. As a result, women are taking matters into their own hands by illegally purchasing misoprostol, an ulcer drug, to induce miscarriage and self-abort their pregnancies.
By inserting the ulcer drug—which is prescribed in the United States under the brand-name Cyotec—into her vagina, a woman can cause contractions and bleeding, leading to a miscarriage. While medical studies have found that the use of the drug is 90 percent effective in terminating first trimester pregnancies, the drug’s use among women in the Rio Grande Valley has been far less safe. Because misoprostol is a prescription medication, women in the valley can either obtain the drug across the border from pharmacies in Mexico or purchase pills on the black-market from flea markets sprinkled throughout the region. As a result, women have no idea as to whether they are purchasing the drug in its purest form. Moreover, while misoprostol can be used to end a pregnancy, it does not necessarily lead to the evacuation of the uterus, leading to the risk of life-threatening infection.
Dr. Lesto Minto, an OB-GYN who served as an abortion provider for over 30 years in the Rio Grande Valley, was forced to stop performing such services in October 2013 because he was denied hospital admitting privileges. Dr. Minto recently told New Republic magazine that since House Bill 2’s passage, 100 of the 200 patients he has seen have come to him to “resolve” miscarriages. Such an incidence suggests a rise in the use of misoprostol.
That women in the United States, a country that constitutionally protects a woman’s right to secure an abortion during the first trimester of her pregnancy, are being forced to take up rogue abortion methods points to an alarming and emerging trend. According to a January report from NARAL Pro-Choice America, 807 laws have been passed since 1995 that limit abortion access in some way. As states continue to pass such legislation, women will be forced to continue adopting dangerous, back-alley abortion arrangements. While Republicans and pro-lifers may veil their legislative efforts as initiatives to protect women’s health, it is women who suffer in the wake of such policies.