The Difficulty of Getting an Abortion in Texas

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http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/the-difficulty-of-getting-an-abortion-in-texas/283045/



AUSTIN, Texas — In October, Susan, a woman who lives in Willacy County in Texas’ southernmost tip, found out she was pregnant. She is married and has three children, and for a few weeks last fall, she couldn’t afford her birth control. Her condition, to her, was not entirely good news.

“I weighed out the pros and cons,” she said. “But I didn't want to have another baby.”

Susan asked her gynecologist about getting an abortion, but the doctor said she didn’t perform the procedure. For women in her area, there was only one place to go: Reproductive Services of Harlingen, where Dr. Lester Minto has been providing abortions since 1990. She made an appointment, sat anxiously in the packed waiting room, and got it over with quickly, she said.


By the time she came back for a follow-up visit two weeks later, Minto was no longer offering abortions. In fact, the entire Rio Grande Valley—an area with 275,000 women of reproductive age—is now without a single abortion provider.