In Texas, restrictive abortion clinic standards have caused a reduction in the state’s number of clinics by a large sum — Texans had access to 41 clinics just three years ago but now only has 17, according to the Atlantic.
That number is expected to be reduced even more harshly — down to 10 — should the Supreme Court uphold Texas’s proposed law to force clinics to meet the same standards ambulatory surgical centers must meet.
The law was proposed by legislators under the guise it is promoting women’s health when in actuality it is only limiting access to the sometimes vital procedure.
The New York Times reports at Texas’s current level of 17 clinics, most women are, on average, 111 miles from the nearest place to get access to an abortion.
That has driven many women to attempt abortions alone. Actually, an estimated 1.7 percent of women aged 18-49 — the agreed-upon “reproductive age” — in Texas have done so, according to a study by the University of Texas at Austin. The study does not account for minors who perform their own abortions.
If women in Texas are far from a clinic and do not have the money or resources to create a road trip out of driving there, self-induction seems to be the only option.
Some women have reported that they attempted or completed a self-induced abortion because they could not even get an appointment at a clinic for months.
For some, it is a feeling of shame in going into a clinic to terminate a pregnancy. That feeling could be brought on by familial pressure, religious obligations or the fact abortion for so long has been stigmatized by society as a no-good, very bad thing.
There are, unfortunately, many unsafe ways for women to get around the financial burden of a daylong trek to the abortion clinic.
They use herbal or homeopathic means, illegal drugs or alcohol and inflict heavy force on their abdomens.
However, the most common method is through drugs like Misoprostol, or Cytotec.
Women unable to get into a safe clinic with professional doctors take these drugs alone. Understandably, they are scared and anxious without the support of a physician or clinic staff.
Anti-abortion proponents often use scare tactics like bold posters featuring edited pictures of bloody fetuses grown to well beyond the point at which they would have been terminated. They try to warn of the gruesome reality of abortion procedures.
What is truly gruesome is the grim actuality that women in Texas have been driven to do this procedure themselves through methods that are not controlled or monitored by actual practitioners.
Legislators must see that it is not their place to make a choice whether or not a woman gets an abortion. They can say all they want about these restrictions being in the best interest of women’s health.
However, it is obvious that creating policies that push women to self-induce their abortion is not in that interest.
meickhof@indiana.edu
@maggie_eickhoff
