In Photos: The Journey to Get an Abortion From Texas' Rio Grande Valley
For women in this impoverished Texas region, getting an abortion is such an arduous process that some turn to illegal methods. And in September, it's going to get even harder.
For women in this impoverished Texas region, getting an abortion is such an arduous process that some turn to illegal methods. And in September, it's going to get even harder.
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Last summer, the Texas legislature passed H.B. 2, one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country. The new regulations left the entire Rio Grande Valley without an abortion clinic.
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There are 1.3 million people living in the Valley, and 1 in 3 work in the agricultural sector — the highest population of farmworkers in the United States. Many people live in unincorporated colonias, some in homes without running water or sewage systems.
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In an effort to help underserved Valley residents, outreach workers from the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health go door-to-door talking to women about their health care options.
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Even before H.B. 2, a third of Valley family planning clinics, which largely offered contraception and not abortion, shuttered after the Texas legislature cut $73 million of their funding in 2011. The cost of care at the few surviving clinics has increased threefold.
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Lucy Felix is a health outreach field organizer. "Before the cuts, women could go to Title X clinics and receive pap smears, contraception, and exams for STDs, diabetes, cholesterol, and breast cancer," she said. "Now, in Willacy County, there is not a single one of these programs."
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To encourage women to learn about sexual health, volunteers with the National Latina Institute host bingo games. But, Felix says, strong taboos around discussing sexuality remain, and so "we don't mention the word 'abortion.'"
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Before H.B. 2 went into effect, there was a Whole Woman's Health abortion clinic in the Valley city of McAllen. It shut down in March.
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A house across the street from the now-shuttered Whole Woman's Health in McAllen, a city where, as of 2012, 37 percent of residents lack health insurance and less than 64 percent have a high school education.
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Even though the McAllen abortion clinic is closed, large anti-abortion signs still speckle an adjacent parking lot.
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Brownsville, the largest city in the Rio Grande Valley, is one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the U.S. It's also the poorest, with more than a third of residents living in poverty.
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Brownsville is also a border town where many people, like this woman, cross by foot or car. Women who can't access abortion services in the Valley sometimes cross over into Mexico, where abortion-inducing drugs are easier to get.
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Other women get Cytotec, an ulcer medication used off-label to cause abortion; teas; and concoctions billed as "bringing down your period" from local flea markets.
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For a woman in the Valley to get a legal abortion today, she has to drive four-plus hours to the nearest clinic in San Antonio.
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Texas also has a 24-hour waiting period and mandatory counseling for abortion, increasing the price of the procedure, as women have to go to the clinic at least three times: For an ultrasound and counseling, for the procedure, and for the follow-up.
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Valley residents who don't work in the fields often find employment in textile factories, in industrial plants, or as housekeepers. Driving to San Antonio means time off, access to a car, legal immigration status, and paying for gas, childcare, food, a hotel, and the procedure itself.
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"People need to travel distances for certain types of health care," Joe Pojman, an anti-abortion activist instrumental in passing H.B. 2, said. "That's not unusual."
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Andrea Ferrigno, Amy Hagstrom Miller, and Fatimah Gifford of Whole Woman's Health, a network of abortion clinics in Texas, have already seen two of their clinics close and are preparing for more to shutter come September.
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Quotes from famous women are painted on the walls of the Austin Whole Woman's Health clinic. The requirement that all abortion clinics be ambulatory surgical centers means this clinic will close this fall.
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At Whole Woman's Health in Austin, women who terminate pregnancies recover in comfortable chairs, where they can sip tea and snack on crackers until they're ready to go home.
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At the Whole Women's Health Surgical Center in San Antonio, which meets the new requirements, women are legally required to recover from the procedure on gurneys.
Jill Filipovic
senior political writer
Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com. She is the author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind and The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. A weekly CNN columnist and a contributing writer for the New York Times, she is also a lawyer.
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