The Supreme Court issued one ruling Monday, a unanimous decision in an interstate groundwater dispute, and nothing else. That means one more week will pass in which pregnant Texans are denied their constitutional right to a safe, legal medical procedure. The Court is still leaving SB8, the Texas law that bans the procedure after six weeks of gestation for all but the most limited of cases—a medical emergency, in place. Another week will pass in which desperate Texans will have to figure out how to scrape up the resources and time to travel out of state to get an abortion and have to figure out where to go.
Some have the resources and the help, and it’s still a gut-wrenching experience. Like the woman who wrote an open letter, as yet unpublished, “To the Male Politicians Controlling My Uterus.” The 30-year old Texan talked about her ordeal to the Austin American-Statesman, about finding out the fetus she was carrying and wanted had an aggressive case of a rare chromosomal disorder, Turner’s Syndrome. Fluid was filling its vital organs, and by 20 weeks, its heart would be filled and stopped. If she carried it, she would have a stillbirth. Or she could travel out of state and have the abortion.
Out of compassion for the fetus inside her body, out of compassion for herself, she decided to have the abortion. She had to leave her home, her state, to get the health care she needed and has a constitutional right to.
“We had gotten four doctors to confirm that if I had continued with the pregnancy, it would have caused suffering for the baby,” she told the paper. “I don’t understand in what world that would be okay.” At 12 weeks, fluid was already building up in the fetus’ neck, reaching the brain and lungs. She and her husband talked to a genetic counselor. “She said at this phase, about 12 weeks, it was the most intense case that she’d ever seen,” she said of the counselor. “In retrospect, I do feel really grateful for the clarity that we got there. … She said, ‘I’m going to help you, and we’re going to talk about every option possible, and not just the ones that are legal.’”
None of her doctors were willing to attest that she was experiencing a medical emergency, the one exception to SB8. They are too concerned about being taken to court by a bounty hunter, a “concerned citizen” who would sue them for “aiding and abetting” what the state has unilaterally deemed an illegal procedure. “It felt like everyone was supportive of my decision, all of the medical personnel that we worked with, but they didn’t want to get involved. They didn’t even want to potentially open the conversation of, ‘Is this something we can file as an exemption?’”
“I would try to compare the absolute heartbreak and devastation that we felt with something your cold, heartless souls could relate to, but alas, you will never have to be in my position,” she wrote in her unpublished essay to the lawmakers of Texas. “You will never have to choose if you should wait weeks for the heart of the sweet, innocent baby within your womb to stop beating, only to then go into full delivery of a lifeless being, or to make the decision to terminate immediately, where you do not have to be induced, where you don’t have to witness the heartbreak face to face.”
She was lucky in that she has no other children to worry about caring for on a trip out of state, the resources to secure the procedure, and family to stay with in California, where she got the abortion. She, and others who have taken the same path know how privileged they are. A Texas woman who suspected she was pregnant early, but not early enough, traveled 1,500 miles for her abortion. She told People magazine that she felt she had an “immense privilege.”
A clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana, helped a single mom with three kids from Texas, like many of their patients. “If you can’t get rid of the baby, what’s the next thing you’re going to do? You’re going to try to get rid of it yourself,” she told AP. “So I’m thinking: ‘What could I do? What are some home remedies that I could do to get rid of this baby, to have a miscarriage, to abort it?’ And it shouldn’t be like that. I shouldn’t have to do that. I shouldn’t have to think like that, feel like that, none of that.”
Kathaleen Pittman, the clinic administrator, said that before the law was enacted in Texas, about 20% of her clients were from the state, but now it’s 60%. She told AP she had recently spoken to a Texas mother whose 13-year-old daughter had been raped and was pregnant. There isn’t an exception for that in the law. “She’s a child,” Pittman said. “She should not have to be on the road for hours getting here. It is absolutely heartbreaking.”
The Trust Women clinic in Oklahoma City is also being inundated with Texas patients. In August, it saw 11. In September, that number jumped to 110, and the phones have been ringing non-stop since, said Rebecca Tong, co-executive director of Trust Women, which also operates a clinic in Wichita, Kansas. “Many of them are trying to literally drive through the night and then show up at 8 a.m. for their appointment, having not rested,” Tong said. “It’s just not a good situation to go into an outpatient surgery, having driven through the evening, and think you can just go right home afterward.”
The reverberations from the Texas bill are being felt throughout clinics, not just in neighboring states, but around the country. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains has 22 centers in Colorado, New Mexico, and southern Nevada, and before the law, saw on average nine Texas patients a week. Neta Meltzer, the director of strategic communications for PPRM, told Colorado Newsline that these clinics saw a steady increase in patients since the law passed, primarily in New Mexico and Colorado, and that it’s increasing wait times for everyone.
“Ideally for us, wait time would be at most a few days to get the care that you need, but in some instances, some locations of ours are seeing a couple week wait times,” Meltzer said. “That’s not ideal, for local patients or patients coming from out of state, either.”
Meltzer said that population size is the issue—Texas had something like 56,000 abortions provided in 2019, compared to 10,000 in Colorado and 2,700 in New Mexico. “That’s an order of magnitude difference … that’s a tall order to absorb all of that patient volume. We’re all working every day to try to meet that need, but it certainly is impacting wait time and availability.” Vicki Cowart, the president and CEO of PPRM, said, “I want to be clear, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains will do everything we can to serve the patients who turn to our region for care.”
“We are working overtime to do this. But with numbers like these, that won’t be enough. There will be patients who simply cannot access care, and that is the core of the injustice created by Senate Bill 8.”
It’s an injustice perpetuated by the Supreme Court. It’s an injustice perpetuated by a Democratic Senate that just doesn’t seem to really get what’s at stake. Here’s a conversation one activist—who helps raise money to elect Democratic women to office!—had with a Democratic senator about abolishing the filibuster.
And this is a senator who is okay with filibuster reform. Too many of them just don’t get it. This Supreme Court has already taken abortion away from tens of thousands of people, and they’re not finished yet. Republicans aren’t going to play nice.
Some have the resources and the help, and it’s still a gut-wrenching experience. Like the woman who wrote an open letter, as yet unpublished, “To the Male Politicians Controlling My Uterus.” The 30-year old Texan talked about her ordeal to the Austin American-Statesman, about finding out the fetus she was carrying and wanted had an aggressive case of a rare chromosomal disorder, Turner’s Syndrome. Fluid was filling its vital organs, and by 20 weeks, its heart would be filled and stopped. If she carried it, she would have a stillbirth. Or she could travel out of state and have the abortion.
Out of compassion for the fetus inside her body, out of compassion for herself, she decided to have the abortion. She had to leave her home, her state, to get the health care she needed and has a constitutional right to.
“We had gotten four doctors to confirm that if I had continued with the pregnancy, it would have caused suffering for the baby,” she told the paper. “I don’t understand in what world that would be okay.” At 12 weeks, fluid was already building up in the fetus’ neck, reaching the brain and lungs. She and her husband talked to a genetic counselor. “She said at this phase, about 12 weeks, it was the most intense case that she’d ever seen,” she said of the counselor. “In retrospect, I do feel really grateful for the clarity that we got there. … She said, ‘I’m going to help you, and we’re going to talk about every option possible, and not just the ones that are legal.’”
None of her doctors were willing to attest that she was experiencing a medical emergency, the one exception to SB8. They are too concerned about being taken to court by a bounty hunter, a “concerned citizen” who would sue them for “aiding and abetting” what the state has unilaterally deemed an illegal procedure. “It felt like everyone was supportive of my decision, all of the medical personnel that we worked with, but they didn’t want to get involved. They didn’t even want to potentially open the conversation of, ‘Is this something we can file as an exemption?’”
“I would try to compare the absolute heartbreak and devastation that we felt with something your cold, heartless souls could relate to, but alas, you will never have to be in my position,” she wrote in her unpublished essay to the lawmakers of Texas. “You will never have to choose if you should wait weeks for the heart of the sweet, innocent baby within your womb to stop beating, only to then go into full delivery of a lifeless being, or to make the decision to terminate immediately, where you do not have to be induced, where you don’t have to witness the heartbreak face to face.”
She was lucky in that she has no other children to worry about caring for on a trip out of state, the resources to secure the procedure, and family to stay with in California, where she got the abortion. She, and others who have taken the same path know how privileged they are. A Texas woman who suspected she was pregnant early, but not early enough, traveled 1,500 miles for her abortion. She told People magazine that she felt she had an “immense privilege.”
A clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana, helped a single mom with three kids from Texas, like many of their patients. “If you can’t get rid of the baby, what’s the next thing you’re going to do? You’re going to try to get rid of it yourself,” she told AP. “So I’m thinking: ‘What could I do? What are some home remedies that I could do to get rid of this baby, to have a miscarriage, to abort it?’ And it shouldn’t be like that. I shouldn’t have to do that. I shouldn’t have to think like that, feel like that, none of that.”
Kathaleen Pittman, the clinic administrator, said that before the law was enacted in Texas, about 20% of her clients were from the state, but now it’s 60%. She told AP she had recently spoken to a Texas mother whose 13-year-old daughter had been raped and was pregnant. There isn’t an exception for that in the law. “She’s a child,” Pittman said. “She should not have to be on the road for hours getting here. It is absolutely heartbreaking.”
The Trust Women clinic in Oklahoma City is also being inundated with Texas patients. In August, it saw 11. In September, that number jumped to 110, and the phones have been ringing non-stop since, said Rebecca Tong, co-executive director of Trust Women, which also operates a clinic in Wichita, Kansas. “Many of them are trying to literally drive through the night and then show up at 8 a.m. for their appointment, having not rested,” Tong said. “It’s just not a good situation to go into an outpatient surgery, having driven through the evening, and think you can just go right home afterward.”
The reverberations from the Texas bill are being felt throughout clinics, not just in neighboring states, but around the country. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains has 22 centers in Colorado, New Mexico, and southern Nevada, and before the law, saw on average nine Texas patients a week. Neta Meltzer, the director of strategic communications for PPRM, told Colorado Newsline that these clinics saw a steady increase in patients since the law passed, primarily in New Mexico and Colorado, and that it’s increasing wait times for everyone.
“Ideally for us, wait time would be at most a few days to get the care that you need, but in some instances, some locations of ours are seeing a couple week wait times,” Meltzer said. “That’s not ideal, for local patients or patients coming from out of state, either.”
Meltzer said that population size is the issue—Texas had something like 56,000 abortions provided in 2019, compared to 10,000 in Colorado and 2,700 in New Mexico. “That’s an order of magnitude difference … that’s a tall order to absorb all of that patient volume. We’re all working every day to try to meet that need, but it certainly is impacting wait time and availability.” Vicki Cowart, the president and CEO of PPRM, said, “I want to be clear, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains will do everything we can to serve the patients who turn to our region for care.”
“We are working overtime to do this. But with numbers like these, that won’t be enough. There will be patients who simply cannot access care, and that is the core of the injustice created by Senate Bill 8.”
It’s an injustice perpetuated by the Supreme Court. It’s an injustice perpetuated by a Democratic Senate that just doesn’t seem to really get what’s at stake. Here’s a conversation one activist—who helps raise money to elect Democratic women to office!—had with a Democratic senator about abolishing the filibuster.
And this is a senator who is okay with filibuster reform. Too many of them just don’t get it. This Supreme Court has already taken abortion away from tens of thousands of people, and they’re not finished yet. Republicans aren’t going to play nice.