Sliding Back to a Pre-Roe World
From 2010 to 2014, states enacted 231 new abortion restrictions. Abortion clinics have closed at a rate of 1.5 a week in the last two years. Planned Parenthood's latest count is that so far in 2015, thirty-five laws restricting access to abortion have been passed in state legislatures. The Guttmacher Institute has found that in 2010 there were five states that passed four to five major restrictions on abortion; in contrast, there were eighteen states in the same category in 2015. Also, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a total of twenty-four states either require or have litigation pending to require first-trimester abortion providers to meet ambulatory center rules. All but three of those states require it. A 2013 Texas law closed more than half of the state's abortion clinics. Texas had forty-one abortion clinics in 2012 but today the number is down to eighteen. If the law is fully enacted, the number could drop to ten. (Source: Mother Jones, September/October 2015)
How far is a reasonable burden? Under Texas's HB 2 law, the distances that Texas women of childbearing age would need to travel to the nearest abortion clinic are as follows: more than fifty miles - 36%; more than 100 miles - 24%; and more than 200 miles - 14%. There would be no abortion providers in the 597 miles between San Antonio and Las Cruces, New Mexico; also, El Paso, with a population of 680,000, would be the nation's largest city without a single clinic. (Sources: Fund Texas Choice, Texas Policy Evaluation Project)
Medication abortion is well suited to rural states, because the doctor's role is fairly uncomplicated. Patients and doctors are linked in a video chat -- called "telemedicine" -- then with a remote control, the doctor can unlock a drawer that contains the abortion pills: Mifeprex and misoprostol. The great advantage of telemedicine is that it saves the pregnant woman what is usually a long round-trip. Because it eases access to abortion, especially to women of limited financial means, telemedicine has been banned in seventeen states since 2011. (Source: Mother Jones, September/October 2015)
Anti-choice zealots have even legislated the dosage of medication a woman may take. Rather than stick with the dosages that doctors now typically prescribe, laws have been passed in five states to require the use of dosages in effect when RU-486 was first introduced. Those dosages were harder to tolerate and caused severe side effects in almost all women.One abortion provider, David Burkons of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, who uses the old dosage rules, going back to the year 2000, says the procedure requires four trips to see him. In the first visit he is required to read a script describing the fetus. (Source: Mother Jones, September/October 2015)
Some of the most egregious statements about abortion/birth control have come from four prominent politicians: a. ... "women are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido... without the help of government." (Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee) --- b. "Women's voices are 'not appropriate or qualified' to participate in the debate over birth control." (Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) --- c. "That's not denying women's rights. If a woman then wants birth control, go work somewhere else." (Kansas Governor Sam Brownback) --- d. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down." (Former U.S. Rep. Todd Akin)
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