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As Texans fill up abortion clinics in other states, low-income people get left behind
As Texans fill up abortion clinics in other states, low-income people get left behind
Texas’ near-total ban on abortions is sending patients out of state for the procedure. Advocates say many immigrants and women of color can’t leave, and that’s increasing the inequities their communities suffer.
BY JOLIE MCCULLOUGH AND NEELAM BOHRA SEPT. 3, 2021 6 HOURS AGO
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Two days after Texas’ new abortion restrictions went into effect, women’s health clinics in surrounding states were already juggling clogged phone lines and an increasing load of appointment requests from Texans.
At a clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an abortion provider said that on Tuesday, the day before the law’s enactment, every patient who had made an appointment online was from its neighbor state to the east. By Thursday, all of New Mexico’s abortion clinics were reportedly booked up for weeks, and a Dallas center had dispatched dozens of employees to help the much less populated state’s overtaxed system.
But for every Texan who is able to leave town to elude the new law, there are more who can’t. ...“That’s the people that have a working car, that can get time off, who have somebody who can take care of their kids,” said Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which covers New Mexico, Colorado and Las Vegas, Nevada. “There are going to be thousands of individuals who don’t have that wherewithal, and it’s really particularly going to impact women of color, young women, rural women.”
{snip}
Half of all women in the U.S. who got an abortion in 2014 lived in poverty, double the percentage in 1994, according to a 2016 study by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group. Texas health data shows that Black patients accounted for about 30% of Texas abortions in 2020, though 12% of the state’s population is Black. In Texas and the nation, Black women are much more likely to die in pregnancy-related deaths than white or Hispanic women.
{snip}
Texas’ near-total ban on abortions is sending patients out of state for the procedure. Advocates say many immigrants and women of color can’t leave, and that’s increasing the inequities their communities suffer.
BY JOLIE MCCULLOUGH AND NEELAM BOHRA SEPT. 3, 2021 6 HOURS AGO
Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
Two days after Texas’ new abortion restrictions went into effect, women’s health clinics in surrounding states were already juggling clogged phone lines and an increasing load of appointment requests from Texans.
At a clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an abortion provider said that on Tuesday, the day before the law’s enactment, every patient who had made an appointment online was from its neighbor state to the east. By Thursday, all of New Mexico’s abortion clinics were reportedly booked up for weeks, and a Dallas center had dispatched dozens of employees to help the much less populated state’s overtaxed system.
But for every Texan who is able to leave town to elude the new law, there are more who can’t. ...“That’s the people that have a working car, that can get time off, who have somebody who can take care of their kids,” said Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which covers New Mexico, Colorado and Las Vegas, Nevada. “There are going to be thousands of individuals who don’t have that wherewithal, and it’s really particularly going to impact women of color, young women, rural women.”
{snip}
Half of all women in the U.S. who got an abortion in 2014 lived in poverty, double the percentage in 1994, according to a 2016 study by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group. Texas health data shows that Black patients accounted for about 30% of Texas abortions in 2020, though 12% of the state’s population is Black. In Texas and the nation, Black women are much more likely to die in pregnancy-related deaths than white or Hispanic women.
{snip}
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