The anti-choice community isn’t succeeding at its ultimate goal of ending all abortion, but its agenda does threaten to eliminate that option for economically disadvantaged women.
That’s because the increasing number of state-level restrictions on abortion only deepen these economic divides. All of the extra hurdles to abortion care — the mandatory ultrasound procedures, the 24-hour waiting periods, the unnecessary regulations on the abortion pill, the restrictions intended to drive clinics out of business — ultimately drive up the cost of this type of reproductive care. It often takes low-income women so long to save up the money for all of the costs associated with their abortion that they run out of time: They’re turned away because their pregnancy is too far along. And it gets worse from there. The women who are denied an abortion are more likely to fall deeper into poverty.
This is the story in Texas, a state with some of the highest rates of uninsurance and unintended pregnancy in the nation. One of the reasons that Marni rushed to book a plane ticket to Seattle was because she didn’t want to endure the ultrasound and waiting period requirements again; she said it was stressful to think about going through that twice, and she was missing too much work waiting in lines at the nearest clinic. Rounds of budget cuts have left a weakened family planning network in Texas, and it’s not uncommon to wait more than four hours at a Planned Parenthood clinic before being seen.
And now, under the new law, it’s even worse. The areas that are losing access to abortion clinics are the same areas with the highest rates of poverty. In huge swaths of Texas, women less fortunate than Marni won’t have any options left. Researchers at the University of Texas estimate that nearly 6,000 women in the state will soon be forced to drive more than 100 miles to get to a clinic. Many of them won’t be able to afford that trip — so, over the course of the upcoming year, an estimated 22,000 women will be denied access to safe and legal abortion care. For them, Roe is more distant than ever before.