Right there with them
The new Texas abortion ban has spurred a flood of women traveling sometimes hundreds of miles to access the procedure in neighboring states.
The law, which prohibits abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and calls for lets private citizens to enforce it by filing lawsuits, has been in effect for just over a month. But already, clinics in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado and New Mexico have said they’re being inundated with Texas patients.
“We haven’t seen numbers like this ever,” Dr. Rebecca Cohen, a Denver OB/GYN, told CBS News last month.
“An abortion can be painful, people can hurt,” Cohen said of the emotional toll. “But this is different. We are seeing patients who are traumatized when they arrive.”
In Louisiana, officials at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport said they went from seeing no more than 20 percent of their patients from Texas to now over 50 percent. Some patients are driving from as far as McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley.
[…]
The Guttmacher Institute, which supports for abortion rights, estimates that Texans are now traveling an average of 14 times farther to get the procedure. In states such as Louisiana, they then have to go through mandatory waiting periods.
The law is likely to disproportionately impact women of color, many of whom lack the time and money needed to get out of state.
In affidavits last month, abortion providers said Texas patients were undergoing traumatic and sometimes daunting trips to neighboring states. One child who was allegedly raped by a relative traveled with her guardian from Galveston to Oklahoma to get an abortion, and another woman was reportedly selling some of her belongings to pay for the trip to an out-of-state abortion clinic, according to the filings, which are part of a pending federal lawsuit over the law.
I guess it’s a minor consolation that some people are still able to exercise their constitutional right, but not everyone can, and those who are able to are now massively inconvenienced and having to pay a lot more money for the privilege. States like Louisiana and Oklahoma have their own abortion restrictions, like waiting periods, so even those who can travel to get the care they need and deserve have to make an ordeal of it. And of course, all this is available only until Oklahoma and Louisiana pass their own version of SB8, which they are apparently free to do now. As writers like Dahlia Lithwick have observed, SCOTUS does not need to write the words “Roe v Wade is overturned” in an opinion in order to overturn Roe v Wade. It’s already happened here, and we’re just the beginning. We need to be voting a lot of people out of office for this if we ever want to get our rights back.
4 days and counting………
FAIT ACCOMPLI ? – WHAT ABOUT CONTRACEPTIVE COMMON SENSE ?
You can still exercise your constitutional right to use contraceptives, and engage in forms of sexual gratification other than the traditional kind that’s associated with human reproduction. –> Dynamic response to change in the legal regime.
With convenient home-town abortions harder to get now, it would make sense to use HIM&HER contraception (2 synergistic methods of birth control) to obviate the need to unncessarily stimulate interstate commerce a few weeks or months later.
ROE V. WADE MAY BE SHAKY, GRISWOLD LESS SO
U.S. Supreme Court
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)
Griswold v. Connecticut
No. 496
Argued March 29-30, 1965
Decided June 7, 1965
381 U.S. 479
Syllabus
Appellants, the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and its medical director, a licensed physician, were convicted as accessories for giving married persons information and medical advice on how to prevent conception and, following examination, prescribing a contraceptive device or material for the wife’s use. A Connecticut statute makes it a crime for any person to use any drug or article to prevent conception. Appellants claimed that the accessory statute, as applied, violated the Fourteenth Amendment. An intermediate appellate court and the State’s highest court affirmed the judgment.
Held:
1. Appellants have standing to assert the constitutional rights of the married people. Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U. S. 44, distinguished. P. 381 U. S. 481.
2. The Connecticut statute forbidding use of contraceptives violates the right of marital privacy which is within the penumbra of specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights. Pp. 381 U. S. 481-486.
151 Conn. 544, 200 A.2d 479, reversed.
Page 381 U. S. 480
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DISCLOSURE: Here in the policywonqueria underground, we look at the causal sequence and favor promotion of early intervention in the form prophylaxis over medically-assisted fetal demise.
Alas, in the Fifth Circuit and in SCOTUS litigation:
QUESTION *NOT* PRESENTED: What Causes Pregnancy? [other than rape & incest]
ALSO *NOT* PRESENTED: What Can Be Done to Reduce the Asserted Need for Elective Abortions?