A year before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Texas implemented Senate Bill 8, which banned abortions for all but the very few who made it to a clinic within about two weeks of missing their period. I was an abortion provider at the time in San Antonio, and the eight months I worked after SB8 took effect were the most depressing of my career. I was forced to turn away hundreds of patients and explain that the most convenient abortion clinic was more than 500 miles away in New Mexico.
The most difficult conversations I had during that time were with patients who had been raped. I remember a young woman in my clinic who, after learning that she couldn’t get an abortion because she was 10 weeks pregnant, told me she needed to rush back to work so her abusive boyfriend wouldn’t find out she had made an appointment at Planned Parenthood. She was pregnant because he had raped her, and she had hoped to get an abortion secretly, knowing that the bleeding and cramping that happen after a medication abortion are basically indistinguishable from having a miscarriage or a heavy period.
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Author: Samuel Dickman
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