I’m a Texas-Born OB-GYN—But Abortion Bans Are Forcing Me Out

Vi Burgess is a resident physician in Colorado, in training to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology. The Texas resident went to medical school in the Lone Star State, but says she’d be terrified to return home to practice medicine.

7/26/2025
by Bonnie Fuller, Ms. Magazine

Ever since Texas became the first state in the country to pass the first abortion ban in 2021, doctors specializing in obstetrics and gynecology have been fleeing the state because they fear getting thrown in jail for up to 99 years if they provide an abortion that the state’s anti abortion attorney general doesn’t deem necessary to save a woman’s life. Texas used to be known as a state with top medical care. Now almost 30 percent of the state’s OB-GYN resident physicians plan to escape it in order to treat patients without a Big Brother state government watching over their shoulders.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/26/texas-ob-gyn-doctor-abortion-ban-law-heartbeat/

26.07.2025

Commentary

abortion provider training

Woman travels to New Mexico for abortion care not offered to her in Texas, joins suit

Kimberly Manzano is one of seven women who joined a suit over Texas' bans.
By Nadine El-Bawab and Mary Kekatos

November 16, 2023

After moving to Texas and getting engaged, Kimberly Manzano, 34, and her now-husband, 35, started trying to get pregnant in April 2022, hoping to share happy news with their friends and family at their wedding just a few months later.

Although the couple didn't find out they were pregnant until November 2022 -- two months after their wedding -- Manzano said they were excited. That excitement turned to devastation not long after when she suffered a miscarriage.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-travels-new-mexico-abortion-care-offered-texas/story?id=104924852

16.11.2023

Center for Reproductive Rights

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

Do No Harm: Texas Court Rules in Favor of Women Harmed by Abortion Ban’s Inadequate Protection for Medical Emergencies

15 AUG 2023
JOANNA L. GROSSMAN

Earlier this year, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit, Zurawski v. State of Texas, on behalf of several women who needed emergent abortion care when their planned, wanted pregnancies went south either because the pregnancy became non-viable or its continuation threatened the woman’s life or health. In each case, the woman needed abortion care to preserve her life, health, or fertility; yet, in each case, she was turned away by doctors and hospitals because she wasn’t sick enough to make the abortion lawful. The lawsuit arises out of the Texas abortion ban that took effect in August 2022, which prohibits abortions unless a narrow, poorly defined medical emergency exception applies. The lawsuit asked the court to clarify that the exception must be broad enough to allow doctors to use their good-faith judgment about when an abortion is necessary to protect the woman’s life, health, or fertility.

Continued: https://verdict.justia.com/2023/08/15/do-no-harm-texas-court-rules-in-favor-of-women-harmed-by-abortion-bans-inadequate-protection-for-medical-emergencies

8 women join suit against Texas over abortion bans, claim their lives were put in danger

The original lawsuit was filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights in March.

By Nadine El-Bawab
May 22, 2023

The Center for Reproductive Rights is expected to add eight more women to a lawsuit it filed against Texas over its abortion ban, claiming their lives were put at risk due to the law. This brings the total number of plaintiffs to 15.

The suit alleged that Texas' abortion bans have denied the plaintiffs and countless other pregnant people necessary and potentially life-saving medical care because physicians in the state fear liability, according to a draft of the complaint shared with ABC News.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/8-women-join-suit-texas-abortion-bans-claim/story?id=99480988

USA – Abortion Bans Threaten All Pregnancy Care

Abortion bans are not only inhumane, they are also imprecise, hinging on medically inaccurate beliefs.

SEP 1, 2022
DR. GHAZALEH MOAYEDI & WHITNEY AREY

With the Supreme Court’s recent overturn of Roe v. Wade, many people in the United States have lost community access to life-saving abortion care. At Texas Policy Evaluation Project, our latest research in Texas documents how abortion bans and their threat of civil and criminal penalties negatively impact the health care of all pregnant people in our state.

Enacted a year ago today, Texas SB 8 restricts abortion at about five to six weeks’ gestation, before many people even know they’re pregnant. After its implementation, we have witnessed both the devastating impacts on abortion access and the emotional consequences for pregnant people seeking abortion care. At the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, our recent study found that the abortion restrictions in SB 8 also created a chilling effect for clinicians who care for pregnant people and adversely affected patients experiencing medical complications during their pregnancies.

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2022/09/01/abortion-bans-threaten-all-pregnancy-care/

19.04.2023

Opinion

Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi

miscarriage management

SB 8

Texas Policy Evaluation Project

‘I would wish this on absolutely no one’: How three women dealt with pregnancy in the year since Texas’ six-week abortion ban

To mark the first anniversary of SB 8 going into effect, The 19th spoke with Texans who sought an abortion in this past year. Each has a different story. But all shared similar sentiments: anger, sorrow, frustration and fear.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
August 29, 2022

Tiff found out she was pregnant on New Year’s Day. Her period was three days late, just enough to suspect that something was off. Still, when she saw the two pink lines, she was shocked.

She was 16. She didn’t know what to do or what would happen with her parents, whom she describes as conservative.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/08/pregnancy-texas-six-week-abortion-ban/

Abortion Refugees Across America

Republican state legislatures are creating abortion refugees across America, many writing legislation that ends all abortions in their states,

SONALI KOLHATKAR
APR 18, 2022

Republican state legislatures are creating abortion refugees across America. After Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a draconian bill, SB 8, into law last year, empowering bounty hunters to sue abortion providers, those seeking care fled to the neighboring states of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

But GOP leaders were ready for them. Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt on April 12 signed the nation’s strictest abortion ban into law, ending all abortions in his state except in cases of danger to the pregnant person’s life. Now, reports are emerging of Oklahomans turning to the neighboring state of Kansas for abortions.

Continued: https://www.laprogressive.com/progressive-issues/abortion-refugees-across-america

State-level Republicans are going all in on extreme anti-trans, anti-abortion laws

The GOP is trying to win votes with a wave of “anti-woke” bills.

By Natasha Isak
Mar 20, 2022

Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country are taking up anti-trans and anti-abortion bills at a shocking rate, as lawmakers seize on an enforcement mechanism first tested by Texas’s SB 8.

Multiple states — including Florida, Idaho, and Texas — have enacted, or hope to enact, new and draconian restrictions, including banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy (functionally equivalent to an outright ban on abortion), or banning gender-affirming health care for transgender children.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/2022/3/20/22987539/anti-trans-anti-abortion-laws-texas-florida-idaho

Texas – Abortion rights groups sue, saying ‘extremists’ are using the courts to target them

Courts asked to block any lawsuits resulting from information gathered in depositions of leaders of groups that fund abortions

By BeLynn Hollers
Mar 18, 2022

Two abortion rights groups — Texas Equal Access Fund and Lilith Fund — have together sued two organizations outside of Texas and two private individuals who they say are targeting them as they try to aid pregnant women after the passage of SB 8, the state law that bans abortions after around six weeks. The Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based nonprofit law firm, and America First Legal Foundation, a D.C.-based advocacy group, are the two organizations listed in the lawsuit. It also names Ashley Maxwell of Hood County and Sadie Weldon of Jack County as defendants. The two women filed petitions in January and February, seeking to depose leaders of the Texas Equal Access Fund and the Lilith Fund.

Continued: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/courts/2022/03/18/abortion-rights-groups-sue-saying-extremists-are-using-the-courts-to-target-them/