Texas Threat to Abortion Clinics Dodged at Flea Markets

[douglas9]

At an open-air flea market outside McAllen, Texas (BEESTX), near the Mexican border, shoppers can buy a goat and get their car windows tinted. Tables with handwritten signs touting Viagra (MDPSVIAG) are stocked with herbal remedies promising to burn fat and boost breast size. You can also find pills to end a pregnancy.

Bazaars like this have become home to a black market where women too poor to afford an abortion at a clinic or deterred by state mandates such as a 24-hour waiting period can buy drugs to induce a miscarriage on their own, a dozen area residents and doctors said in interviews.

Hundreds of miles north in Austin, the capital, lawmakers may inadvertently increase this illegal trade. Rules set to pass as soon as tomorrow might result in the closing of most, if not all, abortion facilities in the state. If the law -- promoted as a way to improve women’s health -- makes legal abortion unavailable in Texas, more women may turn to markets such as the one near McAllen and risk their lives.

“You’d be amazed at how many people, young people, are taking those pills,” said Erlinda Dasquez, a 29-year-old mother of four who has done so herself. “I probably know 12 to 20 people who have done this. My cousin just went to the flea market a few months ago.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-11/flea-market-abortions-thrive-as-texas-may-close-clinics.html

[handmade34]

1. interesting...

not surprising... I have told my story a number of times because I remember the days before Roe v Wade... how soon so many forget

I knew women who died; I used Pennyroyal to abort (worked fine for me as I studied herbalism with some of the best, but women shouldn't have to resort to unknowns), I remember what it was like for some... the outrage must continue and grow!!!

[Le Taz Hot]

2. So they cut family planning funding

so there are more unwanted pregnancies. They're now trying to drastically reduce the number of clinics that perform abortion services which means poor women in particular will have no other choice but to engage in sometimes life-threatening procedures. When's the "pro-life" part of all this start?

[TalkingDog]

3. I hope North Carolina is taking note.

n/t

[Javaman]

4. Flea market abortions

just lovely.

[Ilsa]

5. The article has ugly vicious comments

afterwards, just like you'd expect from a RW rag. Everything from immigration to taxpayer-funded abortions.

It doesn't surprise me that a black market for abortion pills has emerged, especially for women getting just a chemical abortion. It isn't safe, though. Cytotec alone won't do it.

People need access to affordable, comprehensive healthcare which includes reproductive care, including terminations.

[Iliyah]

6. Dark alleys, back rooms

unsanitary equipment, deaths, deaths, deaths for mainly the women who can't afford to go to another state or country. Babies being born with less support re: nutrition and basic care and health coverage because these assholes also refuse the expansion of Medicaid.

How Christian of these so called religious gawd fearing assholes.

[nolabear]

7. This WILL happen more and more. It always has.

People simply don't give a good god damn about women's rights. They shrug and pretend and wish away while ignorance and intolerance and just plain greed make anything go.

When people are desperate they will trust the untrustworthy and those who only think they know what they are doing. Women will die. Every single one of those deaths needs to be documented and shown at every legislative meeting.

I'm so mad I could scream.