Up To 240,000 Texas Women Are Inducing Their Own Abortions

A new study reveals that women are self-aborting due to abortion restrictions in Texas.

Up to 240,000 women in Texas between the ages of 18 and 49 have attempted to end their pregnancies on their own without any medical assistance due to the closure of abortion-care providers statewide.

A new study by Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) revealed that since the state of Texas passed HB2, the 2013 omnibus abortion law – a law disguised as health policy but created to restrict abortion access – 41 clinics have been forced to close, leaving the women facing unwanted pregnancies with little or no options.

The majority of women are using home remedies such as herbs and vitamins, or they’ve traveled across the border to Mexico to obtain the abortion-inducing drug misoprostol used in U.S. clinics.

The study suggested the rate of women choosing to self-abort will rise as a result of additional abortion restrictions in the state. It connects the rise in restrictions with the rising number of self-induced abortions.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 62 abortion providers in Texas in 2011. That number has been drastically reduced and as RH Reality Check reports, “As of June 9, 2015, the day the Fifth Circuit upheld the most stringent requirements of HB 2, mandating that abortion providers operate as ambulatory surgical centers, Texas had 18 legal abortion providers, eight of which were licensed ambulatory surgical centers. A ninth ambulatory surgical center, operated by Planned Parenthood in San Antonio, is scheduled to open in fall 2015. Texas abortion providers have petitioned the Fifth Circuit to block their decision—asking them to rule by June 19—while the providers seek relief from the Supreme Court.”

“As clinic-based care becomes harder to access in Texas, we can expect more women to feel that they have no other option and take matters into their own hands,” said Daniel Grossman, a TxPEP co-investigator and Professor in Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.

The Supreme Court will be deciding if more states will be able to enact this same law, making it difficult for women in other states to have access to their constitutional right to safe, legal abortions.

“The reality is, these laws do not prevent the need for abortion, they do not address the factors leading to unplanned pregnancy,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, the lead organization challenging the laws in the Supreme Court case. “They simply block access for women to professional medical care in their communities.”

Not surprisingly, the majority of women TxPEP surveyed were poor. Restricting access has created an environment where women are unable to afford time off from work – often a matter of days and includes the additional cost of lodging.

“I didn’t have any money to go to San Antonio or Corpus [Christi]. I didn’t even have any money to get across town. Like I was just dirt broke. I was poor,” explained a 24-year-old woman quoted in the report.

Additionally, a majority of the women were also Hispanic, and lived close to the Mexican border. Latina women make up 40 percent of the female population in Texas. Ana Rodriguez DeFrates, policy director of the Texas Latina Advocacy Network, said in a Tuesday conference call, “Due to systemic barriers, Latinas are already more likely to have an unintended pregnancy.” She added that since many Latinas aren’t financially equipped to raise a child, the lack of options force them to carry their pregnancy to term. And if they try to end their pregnancy on their own, DeFrates said that “some will find safe methods to do so, but others will find very dangerous methods.”

The report noted that the home remedies were not the extreme techniques often associated with home abortions; however the danger lies within the lack of knowledge of how abortifacient medications work. “Women need to have accurate information about their abortion… what to expect, etc.,” said Grossman. “Most of the women we surveyed said they would have preferred to go to a clinic than take their abortion into their own hands. This is not the ideal situation.”

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