Having an abortion in Texas is no easy feat to begin with. The state’s forced ultrasound law and 24-hour waiting period ensure that it’s at least a two-day process. Women must make an initial trip to a clinic for a sonogram. They’re required to look at the image of the fetus and listen to the audio of the fetal heartbeat. Their doctor must explain the medical risks of having an abortion and reiterate all of the alternatives to the procedure. Then, women must wait 24 hours before making a second trip to the clinic to actually have the procedure. Even after navigating all of that red tape, low-income Texans can’t always afford to proceed with an abortion — which typically costs about $400 out of pocket — since the state’s Medicaid program won’t cover it.
And this was before the Fifth Circuit’s decision started shutting down Texas’ abortion clinics.
Low-income women who decide to terminate their pregnancies currently face hardship, humiliation or worse before they can obtain the medical care they seek. Many women risk their own health to have an abortion — and were doing so even when there were more clinics available in Texas. Doctors in the state report that many women near the Mexico border are resorting to buying illegal abortion-inducing drugs on the black market, since that’s cheaper and easier than trying to pay multiple visits to a clinic. Now, thanks to the Fifth Circuit, they expect the number of women opting for that potentially dangerous method to rise even further.
This is the landscape facing thousands of women in a nation where the right to choose an abortion is still ostensibly protected by the Constitution itself. “[T]he essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once again reaffirmed,” according to the Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But for women like Marni Evans in deeply conservative states, the world does not look very different than it would look if Roe had been overruled.
In that alternate universe, where Justice Anthony Kennedy joined with his fellow conservatives to end Roe v. Wade, Marni would still be able to seek an abortion in liberal Seattle, while poorer women would still struggle to obtain the cash and the time off necessary to receive safe medical care — or, worse, they would try to end their pregnancies by taking illegal drugs intended to induce stomach ulcers. The real world and this alternative world are far more similar than Casey‘s promise to reaffirm Roe‘s “essential holding” would suggest. And neither bears much resemblance to a nation where abortion rights are fully protected.