"Any day now, the Supreme Court is going to decide whether women everywhere have full access to the right to an abortion, or just those who live in the right ZIP code -- and whether any other woman in Texas, where I live, will have to go through what I did last fall," writes Valerie Peterson in an opinion piece for the New York Times.
Peterson explains, "The abortion restrictions that the court is currently considering, which were passed in 2013 under the pretext of protecting women's health and safety, are really nothing more than unnecessary obstacles." According to Peterson, the Supreme Court is considering medically unnecessary provisions in Texas' omnibus antiabortion-rights law (HB 2) that require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and mandate that clinics meet the building requirements of ambulatory surgical centers. Since the law's passage, "more than half the abortion clinics in the state" have closed, she writes.
Describing her own experience accessing abortion care, Peterson notes how the restrictions "made a devastating situation much worse," stating, "Nearly six months after my abortion I still carry the scars of the experience -- not of the procedure itself, which was a blessing I will never regret, but of how hard it was to get the care I needed in the state where I live."
She explains that after having two children and being told she could not become pregnant, she learned she had a high-risk pregnancy. During a sixteen-week ultrasound appointment, Peterson received a diagnosis of a fetal anomaly incompatible with life. Peterson's physician informed her she could choose either to carry the pregnancy to term or have an abortion.
After deciding to have an abortion, Peterson learned she would have to obtain the procedure at an abortion clinic. Once referred to a clinic, she found that she "would have to wait three to four weeks for the next available appointment." Peterson writes, "There was no way I could wait that long. Not only would I be carrying a [fetus] I knew wouldn't survive, but that kind of wait could push me past the 20-week mark after which almost all abortions are illegal in Texas."
Peterson's physician managed to arrange an appointment for the following week instead, but when Peterson "found out the procedure would ... take three to four days to complete as a result of other restrictions that include mandatory counseling, a required sonogram and an additional 24-hour [mandatory delay], [she] broke down." Through a friend, Peterson managed to get an appointment for abortion care the following day in Florida, where at the time the state did not impose a mandatory delay.
Including the cost of airfare, lodging and a rental car, Peterson writes that she "had to spend close to $5,000" for the procedure. She notes, "I remember thinking: What happens to women in my situation who don't have the ability to do what I just did?"
After returning to Texas, Peterson shares how she became "involved in activism on behalf of other Texas women like me -- women who needed abortion access, and couldn't get it." Citing research on the number of Texas women who attempt to self-induce abortion care, Peterson concludes, "The restrictions on abortion procedures in Texas ultimately won't lower the number of people who need the procedure. They will just force women to take drastic measures" or "ris[k] their jobs, spen[d] their life savings, driv[e] hundreds of miles, cros[s] state lines as I had to -- all to exercise a right that the Constitution protects" (Peterson, New York Times, 6/15).
