Abortion providers on two years of Texas ban: ‘We’re living in a devastating reality’

Senate Bill 8 wiped out almost all abortion care in the second-most populous state in the US, and served as a harbinger of what was to come over the rest of the country

by Mary Tuma
Thu 31 Aug 2023

Nearly a year before the US supreme court eviscerated Roe v Wade, the court allowed an unprecedented abortion ban to take effect in Texas, serving as a harbinger of what was to sweep over the rest of the country.

…. In the two years since, Texas abortion providers – some of the first in the US to experience a nearly post-Roe world – reflect on the devastating and lasting effect of the severe law, the trauma they felt denying patients care, and the struggle they faced when deciding whether or not to flee the state or stay put.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/31/texas-abortion-ban-senate-bill-8

Last year’s US Supreme Court ruling left women struggling to find abortions

Evelyn Hockstein, Gabriella Borter
July 22, 2023

The day Alan Braid opened his abortion clinic for business in Albuquerque, New Mexico, last August, he looked out at a waiting room full of patients fresh off trips from Texas, some with suitcases in tow.

Several months later, Dr Braid’s daughter Andrea Gallegos drew a similar crowd to the opening of their abortion clinic in Carbondale, Illinois, with patients arriving from far-flung states to end pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/roe-v-wade-texas-abortion-b2366363.html

22.07.2023

“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/

How one quiet Illinois college town became the symbol of abortion rights in America

Chris Kenning, USA TODAY
Jun. 4, 2023

CARBONDALE, Ill. – The 26-year-old had never heard of the distant southern Illinois town, but it had become the closest option.

So she cobbled together money. Found child care. Asked her brother for a ride. And set off early one morning to drive north across state lines to 22,000-person Carbondale.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2023/06/04/carbondale-illinois-abortion-clinics/70180040007/

Texas court dismisses case against doctor who violated state’s abortion ban

The law allows civil suits against anyone who performs or aids an abortion.

By Nadine El-Bawab and Mary Kekatos
December 8, 2022

A Texas court dismissed a lawsuit Thursday against a doctor accused of providing an abortion to a woman despite the state's strict ban on the procedure.

Dr. Alan Braid performed the abortion for a patient in early September 2021, just five days after S.B.8 went into effect, which bans abortion after six weeks' gestation. The patient's pregnancy was further along than six weeks.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-court-dismisses-case-doctor-violated-states-abortion/story?id=94796642

08.12.2022

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News

Aaron Haas

Center for Reproductive Rights

Video: As San Antonio abortion clinic closes, its director worries about who is left behind

In August, movers arrived at Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services to help the abortion clinic pack up for a move out of state.

BY JINITZAIL HERNÁNDEZ
SEPT. 5, 2022
Video: 4:21 minutes

SAN ANTONIO — Abortion clinics are closing across Texas after the state banned the procedure, with few exceptions, at any point in a pregnancy. At Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services, office equipment is marked for donation, longtime staff members are relocating or finding new jobs, and medical equipment is loaded onto moving trucks.

Before the movers arrived on a Thursday morning in August, executive administrator Andrea Gallegos turned the lights on in empty patient rooms and worried about whom the clinic was leaving behind.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/05/alamo-abortion-clinic-moving/

05.09.2022

Commentary

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Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services

Texas – Abortion restrictions threaten care for pregnant patients, providers say

Women’s health care providers are holding back when counseling pregnant patients about treatment options, doctors report pharmacists are hesitant to distribute some prescriptions, and OB-GYN training is diminishing for Texas medical school students.

BY SNEHA DEY AND KAREN BROOKS HARPER ,Texas Tribune
MAY 24, 2022

Teresa Kim Pecinovsky is terrified she will have a miscarriage.

The 38-year-old Houston mother of two children is in the second trimester of a high-risk pregnancy, but uncertainty about Texas abortion laws means that she — and her gynecologist — are worried about her access to proper medical care if that nightmare were to come true.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/24/texas-abortion-law-pregnancy-care/

Federal appeals court to hear narrow challenge to Texas abortion law on Friday

In December, the U.S. Supreme Court left the law largely intact, allowing only a challenge against medical licensing officials to proceed. An appeals court will now consider whether to send the case to the Texas Supreme Court.

BY ELEANOR KLIBANOFF, Texas Tribune
JAN. 6, 2022

Texas’ new restrictive abortion law returns on Friday to a federal appeals court, where judges will consider a very narrow legal question: whether state medical licensing officials can discipline doctors and nurses for performing abortions in Texas after about six weeks of pregnancy.

This thin challenge is the only one left to abortion providers since the Supreme Court’s 8-to-1 decision in December, which kept the uniquely designed law largely intact. At Friday’s hearing, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will decide whether that remaining challenge should be sent to the Texas Supreme Court or proceed in federal court.

Continued: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/06/texas-abortion-appeals-court/

Doctor Sued For Violating Texas Abortion Ban Countersues Accusers And Asks Court To Strike Down Law

Alison Durkee, Forbes Staff
Oct 5, 2021

The first Texas doctor to be sued under the state’s new law that bans the vast majority of abortions filed his own lawsuit Tuesday against the three private citizens who brought the litigation, seeking to combine the multiple lawsuits and have the law ruled unconstitutional.

Dr. Alan Braid, backed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, filed the litigation in federal court in Illinois—where one of the three people who sued Braid lives—to resolve the “conflicting” lawsuits against him.

Continued: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/10/05/doctor-sued-for-violating-texas-abortion-ban-countersues-accusers-and-asks-court-to-strike-down-law/?sh=4d876f73329a

05.10.2021

Center for Reproductive Rights

Texas Heartbeat Project

Texas Right to Life

Wolfgang P. Hirczy De Mino

How 3 lawsuits could potentially stop the Texas abortion ban

There are three major cases currently challenging the new Texas law, all taking up different arguments. Any one of them could reach the Supreme Court. Here’s how.

Jennifer Gerson, Reporter
October 1, 2021

Texas’ law effectively banning abortions after six weeks will get its first hearing in front of a judge since going into effect last month. A U.S. district judge in Austin will hear arguments in the federal government’s suit against Texas Friday, the earliest opportunity for a court order that could block Senate Bill 8 and prevent it from continuing to be enforced.

It’s the first in a salvo of challenges to SB 8. Last week, the ACLU, on behalf of the abortion provider Whole Woman’s Health, asked for an expedited hearing on their case. And 20 days after SB 8 went into effect, the first civil suit against an abortion provider was filed after the provider publicly said he knowingly violated the law.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2021/10/how-3-lawsuits-could-stop-the-texas-abortion-ban/