Abstract

Down and Out in Texas

Did you know that since January 1, women in Texas have not been able to obtain abortions from the sixteenth week of pregnancy on? This blackout on women's rights and health is happening not because abortions after the fourth month were declared illegal--far from it: In theory, all that has changed is a bureaucratic regulation included in a bundle of antiabortion legislation, HB15. Most of the provisions in HB15, which sailed through the Republican-dominated state legislature, are familiar. The killer provision, though, is the one that has received the least press coverage: Beginning with the sixteenth week of pregnancy, abortions can no longer take place in clinics--they must now be performed in a hospital or an ambulatory surgical center. What happens when the only facilities that can legally provide abortions after sixteen weeks won't, and the only facilities that want to provide them are legally barred from doing so? Thousands of Texas girls and women suffer. The law is written so tightly--no exceptions even to save the woman's life--that clinics have no wiggle room, says Amy Hagstrom Miller, who owns the Whole Woman's Health Clinic in Austin and another in McAllen, near the Mexican border. In fact, many clinics have stopped doing abortions after fourteen weeks just to be on the safe side.