Red States Are Exploiting Coronavirus to Ban Abortion
Last week, a 24-year-old woman living in Arlington, Texas, filed a court declaration describing what she’s gone through since the governor, Greg Abbott, used the coronavirus crisis as a pretext to essentially ban abortions.
A college student studying to be a teacher, she’d lost her part-time waitressing job at around the same time she found out she was pregnant. She knew without question that she wanted an abortion, but even before Abbott signed the executive order that temporarily outlawed the procedure in the state, she had a hard time finding a clinic that could see her.
Eventually the woman, who opted to remain anonymous, was able to make an appointment in Fort Worth on March 20. Because of social distancing rules, she wasn’t able to bring her partner. According to her declaration, after signing in she had to wait for two hours in her car, while protesters waved their signs and screamed at her. Once inside, she decided to have a medication abortion, but because of Texas’s 24-hour waiting period, she couldn’t get the pills that day.
The next available appointment was on March 24. But before she could return, Abbott declared abortion a nonessential procedure that could not be performed during the coronavirus pandemic, ostensibly to save personal protective equipment needed by doctors and nurses. Frantic, the woman began calling clinics in nearby states.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/opinion/abortion-covid.html
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