(CN) — Anna was always in favor of choice when it came to abortion, but she figured she would “never make that choice.” That calculus changed in 2014, when she discovered she was pregnant by her abusive ex-boyfriend.
The man at first seemed like Prince Charming, but his behavior grew increasingly erratic and violent. He punched holes in her walls, stalked her and injured three of her dogs, killing one. A fourth dog died from what a veterinarian suspected was rat poison.
“If he could kill a four-pound dog to upset me, what would he do to a child?” Anna remembered thinking. Besides, she worried that sharing a child would make it harder to disentangle from him.
“That would be the way he could manipulate and control me,” she said in an interview. “I’d have to deal with this man for the rest of my life.” Anna’s identity and location are not being revealed for her safety.
Today in Texas, Anna may not have been able to receive an abortion at all. Senate Bill 8, which the Texas Legislature passed last year, bans abortions past fetal cardiac activity, which typically occurs around six weeks. The law also allows ordinary citizens to pursue damages against anyone who allegedly “aids or abets” an abortion.
SB 8 is the most successful attempt by Texas lawmakers to undermine abortion rights — but it's hardly the first. When Anna decided she needed an abortion, another Texas law had recently shuttered clinics across the state, and there were none nearby. In the end, she had the procedure in New Mexico — a state that remains a lifeline for Texans needing abortions.
The latest law didn't exactly criminalize abortion. Instead, SB 8 allows people to sue providers and others if they believe an unlawful abortion has occurred.
Planned Parenthood called the rules a “bounty-hunting scheme.” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused Texas of outsourcing “the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry.” This unusual strategy has so far paid off for anti-abortion activists: Because state officials don’t enforce the law, both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court have ruled abortion providers can’t seek temporary injunctions against them.
While legal battles over the law play out, Texans have had to look outside the state for abortion care. Many people don’t even realize they’re pregnant during the first six weeks of pregnancy — and most who receive abortions do so after this window.
Sarah Wheat, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, says that clinics in nearby states like New Mexico have seen around an 800% increase in Texas patients. The Texas Policy Evaluation Project, a group that tracks and studies abortion restrictions, estimates that the number of Texans seeking out-of-state abortions increased more than tenfold in the months after SB 8 took effect, from around 500 in the final months of 2019 to more than 5,500 in the same time period in 2021.
As abortion rights erode across the country, advocates fear the worst is yet to come. In Oklahoma, where many Texas women have traveled for care, lawmakers recently passed a bill that adopted Texas’ citizen-enforced system to limit abortions past six weeks. The local branch of Planned Parenthood announced they were no longer “providing surgical or medical abortion procedures in Oklahoma,” though they said they could help direct patients to other states.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican who calls himself “the most pro-life governor in the country,” also signed an even harsher bill that makes almost all abortions a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. At least 13 states have passed such “trigger laws” that would automatically criminalize abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned — and that possibility seems increasingly likely. In a draft majority opinion leaked this week, Justice Samuel Alito called the Roe decision “egregiously wrong” and compared ending abortion to overturning segregation.
Follow @stephentpaulsen
