AUSTIN, Texas — Abortion-rights supporters and opponents are viewing Texas’ new abortion law as an example of what could happen in many states if the U.S. Supreme Court curtails abortions by upholding a new Mississippi law or by overturning outright a nationwide right to abortion that has been in place since 1973.
“What we’ve experienced the past three months in Texas is a preview of a post-Roe world,” said John Seago, legislative director of Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group.
“You will have conservative states that take very bold pro-life laws to protect pregnant women and innocent children from abortion. And then you have states that become destination states where people are traveling.” On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks. At least one justice, Brett Kavanaugh, asked whether the abortion issue should be left to the states to decide.
It will be months before a decision is issued.
On Sept. 1, a Texas state law took effect banning abortion at roughly six weeks, before some women even know they are pregnant. And so far, the Supreme Court has declined to block it.
Since the Texas law took effect in September, women have begun traveling to other states, including not only neighboring Oklahoma and Louisiana — states where GOP lawmakers could also move to further restrict abortion depending on the forthcoming opinion by the Supreme Court — but as far as away as the West and East coasts, according to abortion providers and their allies. Some Texas providers say patient volume at their clinics has plummeted to just a third of the usual levels.
Amy Hagstrom Miller, president of Whole Woman’s Health that operates four clinics in Texas, heard few signs of encouragement while listening to the justices. She said she has already been doing “post-Roe planning” for several years, including maps in her office that show what travel will look like for women in states with Texas-style restrictions.
Complicating matters for Texas providers is another new restriction that took effect Thursday, which makes it a crime to send abortion-inducing medication through the mail and bans it after seven weeks of pregnancy. Hagstrom Miller said 65% of her patients choose medication abortions, which have increased in popularity since regulators started allowing them two decades ago.
The Biden administration and Texas providers sued over Texas’ near-ban on abortion, but the Supreme Court’s pace on that has surprised both sides.
As far as the Texas law goes, the way it is written has so far made it unusually difficult to challenge in courts. The question the justices are considering is whether the Justice Department and abortion providers can even challenge the law in federal court.
When abortion providers asked the court to keep the law from taking effect, the justices refused by a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining his three liberal colleagues in dissent.
Clinics in neighboring states are experiencing scheduling backlogs of patients coming from Texas, said Dr. Bhavik Kumar, a staff physician at Planned Parenthood in Houston.
And that doesn’t account for pregnant women who are simply too poor to afford a trip to another state.
“Thinking about the states where they may travel to, we know that they simply cannot absorb the volume of patients that need care,” he said. “It’s very scary to think about how we will provide care.”