Re: Texas Senate passes sweeping new abortion restrictions
I've kept largely silent on this issue with my friends and family because there are quite a few of them who would judge me, if not for my opinion then for the experiences which have shaped it.
When I was 23, and had been dating my now-fiance for six months, we discovered I was pregnant. We had used two forms of birth control and both had failed in epic fashion. At the time, we were living together and struggling to make ends meet. We were the typical lower-middle class couple struggling through a recession. Between the two of us we had just enough money for bills, gas, and Ramen....if we got creative. Coupled with that, I was still untreated for some very serious psychological damage related to my relationship with my mother.
Being pregnant sent me into a tailspin. Money issues notwithstanding, I had repeated panic attacks and nightmares for two weeks because I quite honestly believed that I would harm my child in very serious, significant ways. I was not ready to be a mother. I even questioned my ability to safely carry the child to term to consider any other option because I was so incredibly screwed up mentally, and it was causing physical issues.
After three weeks of debate, I contacted one of two Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortion services in the DFW area (there's one in Dallas and one in Fort Worth). I listened to a recording describing the procedure and the risks and was told that the clinic could only perform the procedure up to 12 weeks gestation because of the way in which the clinic was set up.....
(had to remove the rest of forum limitations - but will leave your conclusion) .
And sure, the motivation of some law makers had little to do with the health and safety of women and more to do with decreasing the number of abortions. I understand the outrage associated with that. But their motivation doesn't negate the fact that the law DOES have the ability to create safer, less damaging abortion services for women in this state...so I support it.
Thank you very much for sharing your experience. Most on the forum give no basis for their opinions from any life experience and instead post like they are ministers on the pulpit or writing political commentaries as some expert.
I read your message carefully. Clearly you had a medical malpractice lawsuit. You also had a valid complaint to the State Medical Board against the doctor. I would imagine the police-state searches and attitudes was due to clear and real dangers posted by anti-abortion protestors - and in light of assassinations, bombings and arsons by ProLifer militants.
After reading your message, I then looked up the actual text of SB5 of the Texas Senate (ie the actual law). I did not find one provision that prevents anything that happened in your experience. So I think your message may be the typical assumption that the grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side. I have - on other threads - posted horror stories about hospitals - including giving completely drugged women they decided shouldn't have more child forms while she was drugged (and father never told this happening) by which she work up having been surgically sterilized. And could tell of hospitals that drug women prior to labor despite her insistence not to be - doing it covertly through the IV from behind - not by a needle injection in her. Etc.
Such a bill COULD have address your bad experiences and concerns, but actually it does not address any of your concerns. Tof his is the REALITY of your message in light of the REAL effect the law:
"While I am prochoice, I had a bad experience with an abortion in Texas so I support outlawing medical facilities that do abortions in Texas."
Because that is the real effect. Here's how and the effects.
1. There are only 5 facilities of a total of 24 that meet just the standard of being a "surgical center." The cost of being a surgical center is astronomical. Those 5 do not and never can meet the other requirements, but let's assume they could...
a.) While Alaska is slightly larger than Texas, it doesn't have 1/20th the population and is concentrated on the coast and highway. Texas population is not. Texas is over 1000 miles point to point - and is an area larger than Maine to Virginia and the Atlantic Ocean to Madison Wisconsin. A total of 5 facilities is less than 1/2 per those state.
b.) Moreover, for how Texas is laid out it means people in the Valley and in West and South West Texas will have to travel over 1000 miles round trip to find such a location. Not an easy thing for a single hourly-employee Latino mother to do, is it? Of course, wealthy North Dallas, Plano, Collin country Republican women have no problem and with a DFW area based location. As always, whether deliberate or inadvertent, who is added huge expenses and virtually impossible burdens by ProLife legislation is low income and trapped girls and women. How in the hell is a pregnant 16 year old going to travel 1000 miles?
2.)
There will NOT 5 locations for such a massive area, there will be NONE. Hospitals do NOT allow doctors not on staff to practice at their hospitals NOR is the regular practice anyway. If Parkland transfers a patient to Children's Hospital, Prysperterian Hospital, the Southwestern Hospital (training hospital) etc, they do NOT send their Parkland doctors along with the transfer. If a woman was transferred from a facility that does abortions to another hospital for some rare complexity, that hospital is NOT going to allow that doctor to come along - nor do they ever do so - for surgeries.
This would be PARTICULAR true for a doctor from a facility that does abortions - bringing along with him armies of protestors, arsonists, bomers, assassins and the other dangers and inference ProLifers DO cause.
So while I understand your bad experience, I also understand the law does NOTHING to prevent it. I also understand you are in PLANO, so "even if it cost more its worth it" is easy for someone who can afford to live in Plano to say, isn't it? Not so easy if you're a single mother with 3 children living in deep West Texas living on $350 a week and a car with a bad transmission - having to travel over 1000 miles, find housing, bringing the children taking them out of school, begging your employer not to fire you for missing 3 days work - and losing that income too.
The legislation is NOT for the purpose of improving treatment of women getting an abortion. If so, the bill would have done so. That all is a lie and a façade. The purpose of the legislation is to effectively make it illegal for any doctor to do and abortion - or even give a 1st month "abortion pill." In short, the law outlaws abortions in Texas by setting standards no doctor and no facility can possibly afford.
IF the law was about better care, ProChoice would support it. IF the law did not make obtaining abortions more difficult or impossible, ProLife wouldn't be cheering it.
So, the REAL question? Did your bad experience convince you that abortions - chemical in the first month or two or surgical if after - be 100% banned in the State of Texas - because that is what the law does.
Oh, and congrats for your economic situation improving and your being able to afford to live in Plano and likely having the economic ability to fly and pay for a hotel, rental car, childcare for other children, et for any daughter you have to another state if she found herself in the situation you did in the past.
(For others info, Plano is an upper middle income white-flight suburb north of Dallas County in Collin County that 50 years ago was farmland and now is, what, 85-90% white and 80% Republican?)
