WHAT WAR ON WOMEN? Abortion’s Underground Railroad - in These Times
The patient arrived in Houston at midnight after a seven-hour Greyhound trip from a small Texas town. With no money for a hotel, she spent the night in the bus station and took a cab to the clinic for her early morning appointment.
Susanna S., a member of the Houston- based Clinic Action Support Network (CASN), met her as she left the building. The patient was distressed, Susanna re- calls; she’d been unaware that she’d have to return two days later for her procedure, due to a mandatory waiting period. She wasn’t prepared for—and couldn’t pay for—the extra nights, nor the three bus tickets needed to get home and then back to the clinic.
The medical procedure was, of course, an abortion. No other healthcare procedure is so heavily regulated and politicized. And a new Texas law—House Bill 2(HB2)—has added a host of mandatory, medically unnecessary steps to the process of obtaining an abortion.
Among other restrictions, HB2 requires patients who undergo a common form of abortion—a “medical abortion,” via pill—to visit the clinic for each of the two doses of medication, rather than taking the second dose at home, as is typical. The law also re- quires a 14-day follow-up visit, in addition to the existing 24-hour waiting period between initial consultation and procedure for women who live within 100 miles of a clinic. That means medical abortions now require a minimum of four visits, if not more.