HuffPost Live!'s Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani hears from Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California-San Francisco, about a Texas Policy Evaluation Project report that estimates between 100,000 and 240,000 Texas women have tried to terminate a pregnancy without medical assistance.
Grossman, a co-investigator with TxPEP, explains that the survey asked women whether "they had ever" attempted a self-induced abortion, so the study "cannot say ... whether this is becoming more common since" parts of Texas' 2013 omnibus antiabortion-rights law (HB 2) took effect. He notes that while the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge against parts of HB 2, "Texas [actually] has put in a variety of restrictions on accessing abortion care over the past 10 years, and so any of them may be pushing women to decide to do this."
Grossman also notes that 18 women interviewed in depth as part of the study said they tried to self-induce abortion for reasons including cost, travel, clinic closures and abortion stigma. "We want people to know that we really think that as access to clinic-based care becomes more and more difficult in Texas, we suspect that [efforts to self-induce abortions] will become more and more common," he said (Modarressy-Tehrani, HuffPost Live!, 11/19).
