Every minute counts for clinics What are you practising abortions in the conservative half of USAdetermined to maintain their activity as long as possible while awaiting a decision from the supreme court on which your future depends.
filtration this month of a draft Supreme Court ruling that would revoke constitutional protection by straight a abort in the US has imprinted a sense of urgency on the operations of those health centers, which in many cases have been preparing for such a decision for years.
“We knew that the day might come when safe and legal abortion would be decimated in our country, and now we are facing that reality,” the regional president of the Planned Parenthood organization in five northern states, Sarah Stoesz, told Efe.
If the Supreme Court overturns the precedent that legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, each state will be free to ban or guarantee that medical service, and 26 conservative-led states are expected to restrict the voluntary termination of pregnancy.
Pass States they even have laws designed to ban the abortion practically immediately as soon as the Supreme Court overturns the 1973 ruling, known as “Roe versus Wade” and that guarantees that right until around 23 weeks of gestation.
Not knowing when the failure will come
The situation is especially delicate in states like South Dakota, where there is only one clinic that performs abortions and this medical service will be prohibited in all cases -except extreme risk to the life of the pregnant person- as soon as the Supreme Court issues its decision.
“Our doors are open and will remain open every day to provide abortion services, for as long as legally possible,” said Stoesz, whose organization depends on the last remaining clinic in South Dakota.
The Supreme Court’s final decision is expected to arrive before the end of June, but the impossibility of predicting exactly when this ruling will occur is a source of stress for many centres.
“By the time we hear the Supreme Court say that ‘Roe versus Wade’ is no longer in effect, we have to literally stop all abortions or we might get into legal trouble,” Robin Marty explained in a recent interview with the local network. WVTM13.
Marty is director of operations at one of the three clinics still offering abortion services in Alabama, where a near-total ban is likely to go into effect following the Supreme Court ruling, exposing those who perform voluntary terminations of pregnancy to death sentences. up to 99 years in prison.
Reinvent yourself, move… or close
In a recent article, Marty noted that his clinic –West Alabama Women’s Center– will not close if it has to stop performing abortions, and detailed its plan to turn it into a center that supports the exercise of reproductive rights and “fill the gaps” in medical care for people with limited resources.
“When abortion is illegal, patients will manage their own (abortion) care and need a safe place to get medical follow-up without fear of being reported to the police,” Marty wrote in Time magazine.
The plans are different in Mississippi, where there is only one clinic that performs abortions and there is a law that would ban that practice immediately if the Supreme Court ends “Roe versus Wade.”
“We have decided to open new facilities in New Mexico, (a state where the right to abortion is protected),” assured the director of the last clinic in Mississippi, Shannon Brewer, to The Washington Post.
New Mexico is one of the states where hundreds of patients from Texas have moved since last September, when an almost total ban on abortion came into force in that territory, and now it also receives some from Oklahoma, where an identical ban has been in force since this month.
“The same question that our patients are asking us over and over once more – ‘why do I have fewer rights than my neighbors?’ – will soon be a reality on a national level,” the head of Planned Parenthood in Oklahoma lamented in statements to Efe, Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas, Emily Whales.
De Texas a Connecticut
Planned Parenthood operates the largest network of sexual and reproductive health centers in the US, and its members are expected to clinics follow open to provide other services following the Supreme Court ruling, but others that only perform abortions will have to close or reinvent themselves.
That battle for survival is not new: With nearly 500 abortion restrictions passed in conservative states in the past decade, clinics that provide abortions have long since become a rarity in parts of the South and Midwest.
Thousands of women must travel enormous distances every year to be able to have an abortion, and the states where that right is protected have received a huge flow of patients from Texas in recent months, in a prelude to what is to come following the Supreme Court ruling.
“We are doing everything we can, such as expanding our hours, to ensure that we provide safe and high-quality care to all patients who arrive,” Amanda Skinner, head of Planned Parenthood in Connecticut, told Efe, which plans to reform its laws to expand the right to abortion.
With information from EFE
