Abortion ban pushes patients out of Texas
WASHINGTON – One Texas woman traveled nearly 1,000 miles to Colorado for an abortion. Others are driving four hours to New Mexico. And in Houston, clinics that typically perform more than 100 abortions in a week are down to a few a day.
Two weeks after the nation’s strictest abortion law took effect in Texas, new court filings show the deepening impact a near-total ban on abortion is already having, as the Biden administration late Tuesday asked a federal court in Austin for an emergency order to temporarily halt enforcement of the measure known as Senate Bill 8. One network of clinics in Texas, which performed more than 9,000 abortions in 2020, said it has so far turned away more than 100 patients.
Abortion providers say they are complying with the law; and Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, which set up a tip line to receive alleged violations, has said it has received no credible reports that the law is not being followed.
A full accounting of the decline in Texas abortions – and how many women are now seeking them elsewhere – is not known. There were more than 19,000 abortion in Texas through April, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Abortion providers in neighboring and nearby states have expressed worry that even with the new surge of Texas patients at their own clinics there is not enough capacity, particularly in the South, to handle the normal volume of patients that would normally have abortions in Texas.
The Justice Department’s original lawsuit last week argued that the law is invalid because it unlawfully infringes on the constitutional rights of women and violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which says federal law supersedes state law.
The department made a similar argument in seeking the restraining order or temporary injunction late Tuesday, saying the “vast majority” of women seeking abortions in Texas are being turned away.
“All the while, clinics in neighboring states are receiving panicked calls from patients in Texas,” the department said.