Texas – The Texas abortion ban has been a hot topic since it was enforced last week on Wednesday after the Supreme Court decided not to ban the law.
Hospitals are now immediately seeing the results, forced to refuse majority of abortion requests across the state.
According to ABC News, Houston Planned Parenthood clinic said that the hospital had to turn down more than 70% of the abortion requests last week due to the new law.
The abortion law, known as the Texas Heartbeat law, bans abortions after six weeks – before most women know they’re pregnant. The law officially went into effect last Wednesday.
According to Planned Parenthood news release, around 85-90% of the abortion requests were turned down in Texas last week.
Doris Dixon, who oversees patient access at the clinic, said her clinic has turned into a “crisis center.”
“People don’t know where to go,” she told ABC News.
The Covid-19 situation makes the current condition in the hospitals even worse. Dixon explained an event last week when a woman asked for an abortion while she was in her fifth week of the pregnancy. When she arrived at the hospital, she tested positive on Covid-19 and she was denied service. She had to undergo an isolation and won’t be eligible after the isolation.
“To hear her beg for someone to help her was hard, she was begging,” Dixon told ABC News. “For me, I was trying very hard not to cry but the tears were coming down, they were there.”
Another alarming fact is that some of the women might try to self-abort, something that is very dangerous and these women risk to lose their life. According to another hospital worker, one woman who was denied service after the law was into force tried to self-abort and she almost ended fatally.
“I’m actually angry because this is an attack on people’s constitutional rights to seek these services. And it’s between them and their doctors,” Dixon added.
SB 8 allows private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. Those who win their case could win a minimum of $10,000 in addition to attorney fees. The restraining order bans the anti-abortion group from suing abortion providers and health care workers.
