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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

'Texas is already creating abortion refugees'

2 replies

frazzled1 · 07/09/2021 08:55

nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/texas-is-already-creating-abortion-refugees.html

Awful. Not in the US, had no idea what a snooper's charter this is. 'Pregnant people' jars but still worth a read. Interesting comment under the article wondering if "Texas will soon experience a brain drain. I doubt intelligent college-educated women currently in their universities will want to remain there any longer than they have to." As ever, poor women who will bear the brunt, many of them WOC.

Just pause and breathe. We’re going to help, but I need you to take a breath and calm down for a moment.

Kathaleen Pittman, director of the Hope Medical Clinic for Women in Shreveport, Louisiana, repeated this mantra over and over to the teary women on the other end of the phone. The calls were coming from all over Texas, where abortion is currently banned at about six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. They wanted to know if they could get an abortion in Louisiana instead.

“The phone has been ringing off the wall, patients attempting to get in,” Pittman said. But appointments were scarce. When I spoke with her on Thursday, Hope Medical Clinic was the only functioning abortion clinic in the state of Louisiana; the other two remaining clinics were closed due to power outages caused by Hurricane Ida. “Right now we are booked out three, possibly four weeks just to get in for that first visit,” Pittman said, noting that a state-mandated waiting period requires patients to come to the clinic twice. “We’re going to see women who are terminating later in the pregnancy than desired because they simply can’t get in quickly enough,” she said. Others, she feared, wouldn’t be able to get an abortion at all. “Of course it’s going to be the women who have no money,” she added. “It’s always the women without the means that suffer the most.”

OP posts:
Aroundtheworldin80moves · 07/09/2021 09:03

And the backstreet abortion clinics will rise. But with women too scared to seek professional help if it goes wrong.

AssassinatedBeauty · 07/09/2021 09:14

This makes me so sad and angry at the same time. Those poor women phoning just one clinic in Louisiana, it is horrific that a modern wealthy country can treat its citizens in this way. The contrast with the recent success of the telemed appointment system in the UK where women could receive treatment at home, leading to quicker appointment times and earlier abortions with overwhelmingly positive feedback from those that used it, is stark.

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