Disabled Texans face more barriers to accessing abortion

Few organizations track the number of disabled individuals trying to access abortion, but abortion providers and groups that help assist Texans obtain out-of-state abortions say they are falling through the cracks.

BY NEELAM BOHRA, Texas Tribune
FEB. 20, 2024

When disabled Texans used to visit abortion clinics, staffers would remember them. They may have needed in-clinic accommodations or American Sign Language Interpreters, and they appeared infrequently. Still, they came.

But more than a year since performing abortions became illegal in the state of Texas, disabled people have become a “missing population” at the clinics still providing abortions out of state, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion provider.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/20/texas-abortion-disabled/

USA – For some pregnant patients, unregulated anti-abortion centers are the only affordable option

Research has found that crisis pregnancy centers often provide inaccurate information about pregnancy, which can influence people's reproductive decisions.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
February 9, 2024

Savannah McNally was 24 years old, and in the middle of a divorce, trying to sell her house, wrapping up her service in the Navy and figuring out a way to finish college. She was also pregnant.

“It was pretty much instantly a feeling of dread. I didn’t want to be pregnant. I don’t want kids,” McNally recalled. “I was crying and screaming, ‘This is not going to happen.’”

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/02/crisis-pregnancy-centers-anti-abortion-only-option/

“The Message They’ve Received Is That You Don’t Deserve to Be Cared For”: Life on the Abortion Borderland

Patients seeking abortions are flooding across state lines—while anti-abortion activists try to shut clinics down.

June 23, 2023
AMY LITTLEFIELD

One day each week, the Rev. Erika Ferguson puts on leggings and a sweatshirt, pulls her hair back under a baseball cap, and heads to a North Texas airport to meet a group of people who need abortions. She shepherds the strangers through security and onto a short flight to Albuquerque, N.M. There, the group spends the day at an abortion clinic, and later they watch rom-coms in an office packed with cots, tea, and homemade cookies. The women Ferguson has accompanied represent a cross section of Texans—Black, Latina, Asian, and white. There have been rape victims and teenagers. There have been moms with teenage children at home. “I’ve taken women from all walks of life, from all ages,” Ferguson told me.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/abortion-clinics-dobbs-texas/

Texas – These abortion funds and practical support groups are bridging the gap for patients

Without these organizations, low-income and marginalized communities would not be able to access the abortion care they need.

By Rebekah Sager
June 15, 2023

Even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, people sought out abortion funds and practical support groups as stopgap measures to receive abortion care. Today, these groups are essential, particularly for low-income and marginalized pregnant people, covering everything from travel expenses to child care and even the procedure itself.

The Brigid Alliance
Five years ago, the Brigid Alliance, a practical support organization that provides assistance to people who are forced to travel outside of their home states for abortion care, opened its doors when clinics in Texas began to close with the passage of S.B. 8.

Continued: https://americanindependent.com/abortion-funds-texas-practical-support-groups/

10 Women on Getting an Abortion in the End Days of Roe “It felt like an insult.”

As told to Alice Markham-Cantor and Megan Paetzhold
The Cut
May 26, 2022

New York Magazine’s current issue gives abortion seekers the information they need to get care, including a directory of professional providers and other support services. Here, ten people who recently had abortions in states across the country tell the story of what it took to get one. Some managed to walk into a clinic and get the abortion pill; others endured mandatory sonograms and waiting periods up to several days; still others stood in line for hours in the face of anti-abortion protesters just for a consultation. A few connected with abortion funds to defray the costs of the procedure and the complicated logistics involved in getting it, but most didn’t, feeling that other patients were more in need — no matter how hard it was for them to pay out of pocket.
https://www.thecut.com/2022/05/abortion-women-on-what-it-is-like.html

26.05.2022

women's abortion stories

United States

Health

Human Rights

A grave warning’: six months of Texas abortion ban sow fear and anguish

The state’s near-total ban has had ‘devastating’ effects, providers say, and offers a glimpse of the future if Roe v Wade is overturned

Mary Tuma
Thu 3 Mar 2022

The most restrictive abortion law in the US has inflicted “devastating” consequences in Texas since it was introduced six months ago, according to healthcare providers and pro-choice groups.

Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) bars the procedure once embryonic cardiac activity is detected, typically at six weeks of pregnancy or earlier, with no exception for rape or incest. As most people are not aware they are pregnant this early on, the unprecedented law amounts to a near-total ban.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/03/texas-abortion-ban-six-months-grave-warning

USA – Abortion rights funds brace for impact ahead of court ruling

Wed, February 16, 2022
Haleluya Hadero, The Associated Press

In the past few months, the number of women who call Fund Texas Choice has doubled to more than 100 per week. The demand, driven by a state law banning abortions at roughly six weeks of pregnancy, has forced the abortion rights fund to hire more people. But it’s still been difficult to keep up with the avalanche of requests.

Texas has tightened abortion restrictions over the past two decades, leading women there to increasingly seek out-of-state abortions. Even before the new law took effect last September, at least half of the women who sought help from the fund got abortions in neighboring states. Today, nearly all of them do.

Continued: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/abortion-rights-funds-brace-impact-230059128.html

‘The Battle Is Far from Over’– Recent Abortion Bans Foreshadow Struggles for Rural Women

Women in rural communities organize to fight for their reproductive rights.

by Carolyn Campbell
January 25, 2022

As battle cries rise after the Supreme Court’s arguments on abortion rights, and city women applaud the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of a mailed abortion pill, women from remote regions where abortions are restricted know all too well the harsh realities of life without reproductive justice.

Over the last two months, living and traveling through Texas and Mississippi, I’ve witnessed firsthand the panic, rage, and resistance of women, liberal and conservative, who struggle to get any health care, no less reproductive health care.

Continued: https://dailyyonder.com/the-battle-is-far-from-over-recent-abortion-bans-foreshadow-struggles-for-rural-women-across-the-country/2022/01/25/

25.01.2022

Commentary

Featured

Amanda Furdge

Food and Drug Administration

Fund Texas Choice

Jackson Women’s Health Organization

“Left out of the conversation”: Transgender Texans feel the impact of state’s restrictive abortion law

While Texas’ controversial abortion law strictly refers to women in its phrasing, it also limits access to the procedure for transgender and nonbinary people who are able to become pregnant.

BY NEELAM BOHRA
DEC. 21, 2021

Samson Winsor moved across the country from Utah to Austin in 2019, hoping he would feel less out of place. The Texas capital city had creative opportunities and cheaper living costs than places like Los Angeles and New York City while still having a substantial population of transgender people to support his identity as a transgender man.

But Winsor said he’s still afraid. Weeks after having sex with someone, he noticed his menstrual period was late. While his hormone therapy affected the consistency of his periods, he worried about the possibility of being pregnant. Winsor anxiously awaited test results, recognizing how limited his options would be if he were pregnant.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/21/texas-abortion-law-transgender-pregnancy/

What an America Without Roe Would Look Like

Legal abortions would fall, particularly among poor women in the South and Midwest, and out-of-state travel and abortion pills would play a bigger role.

By Claire Cain Miller and Margot Sanger-Katz
Dec. 5, 2021

Last week’s Supreme Court arguments on a Mississippi abortion law raised the prospect of a return to a time half a century ago — when the procedure was illegal across most of the United States and women, perilously, tried to end pregnancies on their own or sought back-alley abortions.

If the court decides to reverse or weaken the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, it will usher in a somewhat different era. Abortion would remain legal in more than half of states, but not in a wide swath of the Midwest and the South.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/upshot/abortion-without-roe-wade.html