‘It’s Breaking My Heart’: Abortion Providers on Life After Roe

For many abortion providers, working in a clinic isn’t just a job—it’s a calling. But clinics are businesses, too, and in the 15 states that have banned almost all abortions, business has been turbulent.

Carter Sherman, VICE
June 28, 2023

Kathaleen Pittman was too angry to retire.

Pittman had worked at Hope Medical Group, one of the last abortion clinics in Louisiana, for thirty years. She’d started there as a part-time counselor in 1992; by 2022, she was running the place. She’d gone to the Supreme Court to defend her clinic and won, successfully striking down a Louisiana abortion restriction in 2020.

Two years after that victory, she watched as the Supreme Court dismantled her life’s work by overturning Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. She went back to court to try and fend off Louisiana’s cascade of abortion bans, but a month after the overturning, the clinic had to close. Louisiana had outlawed nearly all abortions.

Continued: https://www.rsn.org/001/its-breaking-my-heart-abortion-providers-on-life-after-roe.html

What clinics in southern states where abortion is banned are doing now

Abortion is now largely banned across the South.

By Kyla Guilfoil and Alexandra Svokos
July 11, 2022

Two weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the South has become covered with abortion bans. Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Texas -- along with Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Dakota -- all now have near-total bans on abortion in effect.

The clinics that had been working there spent years navigating previous restrictions and fighting off state laws.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/clinics-southern-states-abortion-banned-now/story?id=86299844

11.07.2022

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Amy Hagstrom Miller

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states where abortion is illegal

West Alabama Women's Center

Most Women Denied Abortions by Texas Law Got Them Another Way

New data suggests overall abortions declined much less than previously known, because women traveled out of state or ordered pills online.

By Margot Sanger-Katz, Claire Cain Miller and Quoctrung Bui
March 6, 2022

The impact of the Texas abortion law was partly offset by trips to out-of-state clinics, and by abortion pills

In the months after Texas banned all but the earliest
abortions in September, the number of legal abortions in the state fell by
about half. But two new studies suggest the total number among Texas women fell
by far less — around 10 percent — because of large increases in the number of
Texans who traveled to a clinic in a nearby state or ordered abortion pills online.

Two groups of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin counted the
number of women using these alternative options. They found that while the
Texas law — which prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be
detected, or around six weeks — lowered the number of abortions, it did so much
more modestly than earlier measurements suggested.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/upshot/texas-abortion-women-data.html

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 – Six Months in a State of Emergency

By Andrea González-Ramírez
Mar. 1, 2022

During the past six months, Kathaleen Pittman has often noticed some of her staff at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, Louisiana, are on the verge of tears. Every day, more and more patients reach out hoping to schedule an abortion at one of the state’s three remaining clinics, and the one closest to the Texas border. And every day, the employees who answer the phone have to tell callers — who are already frustrated by having to plan around a 24-hour waiting period that forces them to book two appointments — that the clinic may not be able to fit them into its schedule because of overwhelming demand.

“We’re compassionate people. Hearing these women, who are so afraid and so upset, has certainly taken its toll on the staff,” says Kathaleen Pittman, the clinic’s administrator. She’s been working at Hope since 1992, when she started as a part-time patient’s advocate. Over the past three decades, she’s witnessed a full-scale assault on abortion access in Louisiana: TRAP laws, a 20-week ban, mandatory waiting periods, a prohibition on telemedicine, and requiring parental consent for minors. And yet, Pittman tells me, “Never have I been so afraid of what’s happening.”

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2022/03/sb8-texas-abortion-ban-effects-six-months.html

Abortion pill use spikes in Texas as thousands of patients circumvent state’s ban

Orders for the drugs from an international nonprofit spiked 1,180 percent in the first week after the Texas law took effect in September.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
02/25/2022

Texans have been ordering abortion pills online at record rates in the wake of the state’s law banning the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, according to a new study published Friday in JAMA Network Open.

Orders for the drugs from the international nonprofit Aid Access spiked 1,180 percent in the first week after the Texas law took effect in September, increasing from about 11 purchases per day to more than 137 per day. And though orders decreased over the next few months, researchers found that they remained 175 percent higher than before the Texas law took effect.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/25/abortion-pill-use-spikes-in-texas-as-thousands-of-patients-circumvent-states-ban-00011728

Uncertainty overwhelms abortion clinics in Louisiana

PBS, Nation
Dec 13, 2021

NEW ORLEANS – Before Texas enacted the nation’s strictest abortion law this fall, sending hundreds over the Louisiana border to seek care, those in need of abortion services could get medical attention in a matter of days. But the possibility of an imminent Supreme Court decision allowing states to further restrict access has pushed the wait for people seeking abortions in Louisiana to weeks, said Kathaleen Pittman, the clinical administrator at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport.

The stress is overwhelming clinics in Louisiana, already among the most restrictive states for abortion in the nation.

Continued: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/uncertainty-overwhelms-abortion-clinics-in-louisiana

A Louisiana clinic struggles to absorb the surge created by Texas’ new abortion law

October 7, 2021
Sarah McCammon, Lauren_Hodges, Jonaki Mehta

The day before a federal judge blocked enforcement of Texas' restrictive new abortion law, the parking lot of Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, La., was filled with Texas license plates. Women held the door open as the line spilled out onto the sidewalk and into the grass.

"I drove 6 hours and 58 minutes," said M. from Corpus Christi, who didn't want to give her full name for privacy reasons. "I got here at 8:55 a.m. this morning. So I have not ate, we can't bring in anything to drink. My boyfriend's in the car asleep."

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/1044045564/a-louisiana-clinic-struggles-to-absorb-the-surge-created-by-texas-new-abortion-l

June Medical and the Future of U.S. Abortion Rights

(1 hour podcast)
7/28/2020

With Guests:

-    Yamani Hernandez, executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds.
-    Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
-    Kathaleen Pittman, administrator of Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, La., the main plaintiff in June Medical v. Russo.
-    Mary Ziegler, Stearns Weaver Miller professor at Florida State University College of Law specializing in the legal history of reproduction, the family, sexuality and the Constitution.

In this Episode:

In June Medical v. Russo, the Supreme Court struck down a challenge to abortion rights in Louisiana, a state in which reproductive health care access is already fraught. The law would have required all doctors performing abortions to obtain hospital admitting privileges. Even though this case has put such challenges to rest, lawmakers in Louisiana have effectively undercut women’s access to reproductive healthcare, causing clinic closures and more. As our guests make clear, Roe is not enough.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/podcast/june-medical-and-the-future-of-u-s-abortion-rights/

I run a Louisiana abortion clinic. Despite Supreme Court win, I’m nervous for our future.

States have passed hundreds of anti-abortion laws in the last few years. At the Supreme Court, we were successful in striking down just one.

Kathaleen Pittman, Opinion contributor
June 30, 2020

For six years, my lawyers have been fighting a law that would have shut down the abortion clinic I run in Shreveport, Louisiana — Hope Medical Group for Women. On Monday, we won in the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down the law, meaning we can stay open for our patients. I am relieved that the court saw through Louisiana’s deceitful attempts to shut us down, but I'm still deeply worried.

I wish the relentless attempts by politicians to shut down our clinic would finally stop. I know they won’t.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/06/30/supreme-court-june-medical-services-abortion-rights-access-column/3283212001/