By Suzanne Gamboa —
NBC News
A woman who went to Planned Parenthood El Paso Health Center in Texas for an abortion earlier this month told center workers she had been raped.
And she was rejected.
Her pregnancy was too far along under the state's new abortion law, Miranda Aguirre, manager of the health center, told NBC News.
If the staff had performed the abortion, the clinic would have broken the law, risking a possible lawsuit.
Latinas like Miranda Aguirre continue to help women in need.Planned Parenthood El Paso Health Center
The Texas law, known as Senate Bill 8,
makes no exceptions for women and girls who have been raped.
Anyone who successfully sues a state abortion provider for alleged violation of the new law can receive $10,000 from a court.
Staff at the El Paso health center helped the woman with other possible resources, but Aguirre said she had to meet with her workers to help them deal with the reality of the new law.
[It was a decisive year for the right to abortion in Mexico. But these women are still prosecuted for it]
“We tried, we tried, and is saying 'we tried' enough?
Sometimes.
And unfortunately, it is the reality that we work in,” she said.
"Unfortunately, she's not going to be the last patient we see like this
," Aguirre added, "and it's stressful."
Miranda Aguirre, far right, with her staff at Planned Parenthood El Paso Health Center in El Paso, Texas. Courtesy of Planned Parenthood
Latinas oppose the law
Hispanics are often thought to be more conservative than other Americans on the issue of abortion.
However, a Pew Research Center survey revealed that in 2021,
58% of Hispanics believed that abortion should be legal
in all or most cases, a figure very close to 57% of whites.
While 42% of Hispanics and 40% of whites thought it should always be illegal.
Nearly 70% of Asian and Black people said it should be legal in all or most cases.
[FDA Final Approves Mailing Abortion Pills]
Hispanic opposition manifests itself to the extent that
some Latinas oppose the new Texas law.
They run for office for abortion rights or to help women in need get to out-of-state providers by donating to funds that help pay for travel and medical procedures.
Aguirre, a Latina born and raised in El Paso, left Austin to run her hometown health center "because it wasn't something I had access to when I was younger, but mostly because of the way I was brought up," which meant "marrying the first man you fall in love with," she said.
She has been working there for nine years.
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The center, like other clinics that offer abortions, is often the main provider of health care for uninsured, low-income and immigrant Latinas.
With SB8, however, Latinas like Aguirre, who said
all of her staff are Latino,
are now trying to maintain their aggressive push to provide women with health services, operating with restrictions on how far they can go.
“It was a very sad day when Senate Bill 8 went into effect,
when the law was passed,” he said, pausing mid-sentence to contain his emotions.
"It was tough for us, because we knew what the limitations were and what we could and couldn't offer these patients."
[This is the last doctor performing abortions in Wyoming. And he might leave the state because of the hostility he gets]
The new Texas law, the most restrictive in the country, is being challenged in court battles from the state level to the Supreme Court, which has so far resisted attempts to suspend it.
Opponents say
the ban goes into effect before many women know they are pregnant,
as it often takes more than six weeks before they notice a missed period or experience nausea or other symptoms associated with pregnancy.
Women are not usually visibly pregnant until the second trimester.
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Texas lawmakers set the ban at six weeks, arguing that's when
the fetal heartbeat
can be detected on an ultrasound.
Many medical experts say that it is inaccurate and misleading to call this activity a heartbeat.
“In such early pregnancies there is no beating heart.
There is electrical activity within the cells that will become a heart, and we see it on an ultrasound machine as a flicker that may be audible through the machine.
We refer to that as cardiac movement,” said Dr. Bhavik Kumar, a health care provider at Planned Parenthood Center for Choice in Houston.
In such early pregnancies there is no beating heart."
Dr. Bhavik Kumar, Planned Parenthood
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the only Latina on the Supreme Court, wrote a scathing critique in the latest high court action that essentially allows the law to stand for now.
“Because our precedents are clear that Texas cannot outright ban pre-feasibility abortion,
the state legislature enacted a convoluted law that strikes terror
into those who assist women exercising their rights between 6 and 24 weeks.” , wrote.
Terror, despair and trauma
Adrienne Mansanares, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rockies, also used the word "terror" to describe the increased number of women, particularly minority women, who come from Texas to seek abortions at clinics in Colorado, New Mexico. and Las Vegas.
Women arrive fearing that they are doing something wrong by crossing state lines to have an abortion or that someone is following them and their abortion will be discovered when they return home, she said.
Adrienne Mansares, executive director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. Courtesy of Planned Parenthood
"We're seeing a level of desperation on our patients' faces that we've never seen...
That level of paranoia, trauma or terror
," Mansanares said.
In Texas,
about 42% of women of childbearing age are Hispanic,
according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
[No, it is false that there is an increased risk of miscarriage from the COVID-19 vaccine]
Of the 56,358 abortions performed in-state and out-of-state for Texans in 2020 — before the new law went into effect — 20,348 or 36% were for Hispanics, according to state data on induced terminations of pregnancy collected in reports on abortions that providers are required to submit.
There are also Latinas involved in anti-abortion efforts who have celebrated the crackdown on abortions in Texas.
Christianity Today reported that pregnancy centers run by anti-abortion organizations also say they are overwhelmed and see women in despair.
The centers offer pregnancy tests and ultrasounds and do not offer abortions.
Texas has been pouring money for years into its Alternatives to Abortion Strategy, a program that distributes money to anti-abortion nonprofit groups that provide a range of services to women as subcontractors.
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The state increased the program's budget 20-fold last year, to an endowment of $100 million, which drops to $50.01 million in 2022 and 2023. Democratic state Rep. Bobby Guerra has raised concerns about the program's transparency in as to how their money is spent, The Texas Tribune newspaper reported.
Haste to decide and delays to abort
Aguirre said the law is also forcing women to rush their decision to terminate their pregnancy.
Under Texas law, women must wait at least 24 hours after their first clinic visit before having an abortion.
SB8 requires abortion providers to check heart activity after the waiting period, just before the procedure.
[California prepares to become a safe destination for abortions in the face of increasing restrictions in other states]
As a result,
some women feel pressure to schedule their abortion as soon as possible
in order to avoid the possibility of cardiac activity being detected before the abortion.
This cuts down on the time they have to organize childcare, raise money for the procedure or even think about their decision, Aguirre said.
"We've had to turn some patients away"
after a second ultrasound because cardiac activity was detected, he added.
At the same time, Mansanares said, his clinic in Colorado is seeing an increase in women who want to terminate abortions later in their pregnancy.
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Many times these are women who have needed time to organize travel, childcare, time off from work and find the money to pay for all these expenses and the cost of abortion, which can be more expensive in recent times. stages of pregnancy, he said.
“This is not about white women with resources. They are going to abort, they always have.
It's about keeping minorities in poverty,” said Mansanares, whose staff is largely made up of Latinas and indigenous people.
When Texas implemented an abortion restriction law in 2013, Latinas saw a greater drop in the rate of procedures than whites, according to a study by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
The project estimated last July that
the new Texas abortion law would prevent 8 out of 10 people in the state from seeking an abortion.
Hardest hit would be women who are black, have low incomes or live far from an abortion provider, the study estimated.
The law is especially harsh on undocumented people.
Since they do not have legal permission to be in the country, they are at risk of being detained while traveling between states.
Those who live closer to the border cannot travel far from their cities because Customs and Border Protection checkpoints are located on the roads leading out of the border area.
People who are not citizens or do not have legal permission to be in the United States cannot travel freely.
Cathy Torres, chief organizing officer for the Border Fund, said the fund, based in McAllen, in the Rio Grande Valley, helps people with the costs of abortion, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.
"My strategy is to end the system."
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Costs have gone up, because now they help pay for bigger plane or bus tickets or gas bills.
In response to the law, the fund has seen people increase their donations, he said.
“But, you know, the amount of money that we're having to support people with is not sustainable,” Torres said.
“It's costing between $800 and $1,500 to help people
and luckily we have the means right now.
But we can't do this all the time, who can?
Birth control and family planning
Aguirre said that while her clinic is forced to provide abortions, a service she believes is still needed, her staff feels some freedom to educate Latinas about family planning and birth control and take control of their reproductive health.
“It allows us to be proud of what we do,” he says.
"We can't help everyone, but those we help, we educate them and they leave feeling confident in the decisions they make."
However, that doesn't erase the gaps left by what workers can't provide, he said.
“At the end of the day we take home everything we couldn't do,” Aguirre said.
“And that weighs you down, it weighs you down a lot,” he lamented.