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Hardly any other law has attacked the physical autonomy of women as devastatingly as the Texas abortion law. While the law was recently dejected in a landmark Supreme Court ruling, this will be of no consolation to the thousands of women denied access to abortions during the years of the law’s existence. Now new research shows how disproportionately women were affected in the state of Texas.
A Dallas Morning News detection finds the law was more effective than any other group in preventing Hispanic and black women from accessing abortion services. In 2014 – the first year after the ban was introduced – there was a 14 percent decrease in abortions across Texas across the country. That is 9,000 fewer abortions than in 2013.
While the situation was bad for all Texan women, Hispanic and black women from mostly low socioeconomic groups bore the brunt of the ban. The number of Hispanic women aborted was down 18 percent, 4,400 fewer than the previous year. Meanwhile, black women saw a 7.5 percent decrease in abortions, compared with 6.7 percent for white women.
Texas’s House Bill 2 (HB2) has placed several tough restrictions on abortion providers operating within the state. It required that the doctors performing abortions have admission privileges in local hospitals and that the facilities meet the same standards as outpatient surgical centers. All in all, the law would have required all but nine or ten abortion clinics in the state are due to close.
At that time the legislature covered theirs Efforts with a semblance of concern for the safety of women who have abortions in the state. In reality it was a “Sham“Designed to prevent women from performing the safe and legal abortions they need. The law was finally repealed in June 2016 after the Supreme Court found it “unduly burdensome” access to abortion and is therefore contrary to the Constitution.
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Though disturbing, the dates are by no means unexpected. Whenever a regressive social policy is introduced, the poorest and most deprived of rights suffer the most: rising tuition fees or archaic abortion policies rooted in polemical disguise as a medical fact. Abortion advocate Clare Murphy of the UK Pregnancy Counseling Service knows this all too well.
“Abortion restrictions always disproportionately affect poorer women,” she explains. “You can afford to spend less time away from work, to travel long distances and pay for housing and childcare costs, before the cost of the treatment itself.”
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Another danger is that women will resort to desperate measures to obtain the necessary abortions. “More women are likely to turn to abortion drugs online or get them on the black market. Restricting abortions doesn’t stop women from having them, it just means they can find alternative ways of managing their pregnancies without the advice and support finish that you would wish for. ” to have all women. “
In particular, Hispanic women in the low-income areas of the Rio Grande Valley have been virtually denied access to affordable abortions. Whole Women’s Health – the only abortion provider in the area – was closed for most of 2014 was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case denying HB2 on behalf of the 2.5 million Latina women of childbearing age in the state.
Jessica Gonzaléz-Rojas of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health emailed Broadly that the new data confirmed what they had anecdotally heard from Hispanic women across Texas. “[It] shows not only that the decline in the number of safe, legal abortions is clearly related to the loss of access, but also that Latinas were disproportionately affected by the abolition of clinics.
“The data shows exactly why the Supreme Court overturned the HB2 provisions: because they are harmful to women and their families.”
In Hidalgo County – where 33.5 percent of the population and 45.7 percent of children live poverty—Hispanic women had 60 percent fewer abortions in 2014 than the year before. By June 2014, women living in Hidalgo County had to drive nearly 180 miles to the nearest abortion provider in neighboring San Antonio: a journey that was out of reach for many women for financial and practical reasons.
Gonzaléz-Rojas explains the efforts some women have made to gain access to abortion treatment. “” In our amicus letter to the Supreme Court in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt we have documented countless stories of Latinas who were forced to take out predatory payday loans in order to get quick access to funds for the procedure, gasoline and travel. “On:” We heard of Latinas who had to risk their employment, to take several days off because of the compulsory delays / waiting times and long journeys that they had to take because the clinics in their community were closed. “
For the women of Hidalgo County – and any women who unexpectedly became pregnant while HB2 was in operation – 2014 marked the year that their right to make life-changing decisions about their own bodies was profoundly compromised. As Gonzaléz-Rojas explains: “[While] We are thrilled that the Supreme Court overturned this bogus law, [today’s data is] a sad reminder of all the work we have to do to undone. “
