Emergency In Texas: First Day of Austin Abortion Trial
By Sunsara Taylor | August 4, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Today, on page three of the Austin Statesman (the main newspaper in the capital of Texas), a striking ad declared to the world, “Emergency in Texas—Stop Forced Motherhood—Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!” Signed by luminaries and long-time abortion rights and women's liberation fighters from Gloria Steinem and Cornel West, to Susan Brownmiller, Cindy Sheehan, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Nixon, and Eve Ensler. Voices from many different walks of public life lent their voices to wake people up to the emergency facing women and to call for courageous and massive political resistance to this war on women. This must be spread widely, more people should sign, and everyone should act on the truth of what is laid out:
“We reject the view that a woman's highest purpose is to bear children. Women are full human beings with the moral, ethical and legal right to decide when and whether to be mothers. NO MORE women denied the right to dream, the right to live full lives, the right to love, the right to decide for themselves. WE WILL RESIST!”
However, aside from this powerful ad, it is a stunning indictment of the state of emergency facing abortion rights that the entire national media is not closely following the trial that began today in Austin, Texas to determine whether on September 1 all but six abortion clinics in Texas will be forced to shut down. Inside the courthouse, Whole Women's Health and other Texas abortion providers challenged two major elements of last year's draconian anti-abortion bill HB2.
One portion of the law being challenged is the requirement that every abortion facility in the state of Texas meet the same physical requirements as an Ambulatory Surgery Center, basically a mini-emergency room. To give a sense of how unnecessary this is, it is ten times safer to have an abortion than to give birth to a child, yet while it is perfectly legal to have a child in your own living room, you will soon only be able to get an abortion in a mini-emergency room. This law was designed to close down clinics and it will have that effect, leaving over a million women in Texas at least 150 miles from the nearest abortion clinic. Without a doubt, this puts an “undue burden” on women in restricting their right to abortion.
The second portion of the law being challenged relates to its requirement that all doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at local hospitals. This also is completely medically unnecessary. Again, abortion is extraordinarily safe; as testified to in court today it is safer statistically than taking a shot of penicillin. Another illustration of this fact brought out in court this morning: while over 500 women died due to pregnancy-related deaths in Texas between 2008 and 2011, only one woman died from an abortion-related death! But even more than that, in the extremely rare instances that women experience complications during an abortion, hospitals are already required to admit and treat these women. But, during this hearing, this hospital admitting privileges requirement as a whole is not being challenged (that is being challenged in a separate case currently working its way through the courts). What is being challenged is the closure of clinics in the Rio Grande Valley and in El Paso on the basis of this portion of the law. Abortion providers and the Center for Reproductive Rights are arguing that enforcing this portion of the law creates such an undue burden on women in these extremely geographically isolated and extremely impoverished regions by closing the only clinics that were there that it should not be enforced even if it is allowed to be enforced in other parts of the state.
In sum, at its worst this trial will result in no change and all but six abortion clinics in Texas will be closed on September 1. At its best, the closure of non-ambulatory surgery center abortion facilities will be halted—keeping nearly 20 abortion clinics in operation—and the already shuttered facilities in both the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso will re-open. Of course, it also could be any combination of the above, or a delay on a final ruling that allows the clinics to stay open or to be closed in the meantime.
The stakes for how this trial plays out are enormous. If the clinic closures are not halted, this will concretely put abortion services out of reach for huge numbers of women. This will cause many to be forced to have children against their will, with all the horrific repercussions that means for women's lives. Or, they will be forced to go to extreme, degrading and desperate measures to get enough resources together for an abortion, often losing their jobs to take the time off to travel and fulfill the mandatory 24-hour waiting period. Or, they will risk their lives to terminate a pregnancy on their own.
Recently, a Texas abortion doctor described to me and other volunteers on the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014: Ground Zero Texas that he/she regularly sees patients who are experiencing infections or other dangerous side-effects of botched self-abortions. This didn't used to happen, but ever since HB2 began to go into effect (the hospital admitting privileges element of the law already closed more than a dozen clinics) it is a regular occurrence. This will only get worse if more clinics close.
But the stakes for this trial reach far beyond even the women of Texas. The precedent set in any one part of the country, both legally and politically, will affect the country as a whole. What is playing out today in Texas is part of a nationally coordinated, decades-long fight to criminalize abortion in all circumstances for all women.
Outside the Courthouse
As bad as it would be for women if this law goes forward, it will be even worse if it goes forward without massive political resistance. Too many years have gone by, actually too many decades, in which people have passively accepted abortion restriction after restriction, clinic closure after clinic closure, anti-abortion terror tactic after terror tactic and ever-greater stigmatization of abortion throughout society. Always there are voices and politicians who criticize the most extreme and hateful dimensions of these restrictions, but still the laws and restrictions go forward. Over and over again we watch as yesterday's outrage becomes today's “compromise position,” and tomorrow's limit of what can be imagined.
This can go on no longer. Each and every new law and restriction must be resisted and opposed. It must not merely be opposed on the basis of criticizing its most extreme and woman-hating dimensions. It must be exposed and opposed as part of an entire nationally coordinated attempt to enslave women to forced reproduction. The full Christian fascist agenda behind these laws and terror tactics must be exposed and opposed and powerful, determined, uncompromising resistance must be brought forward to this entire war.
It is only in this way that we stand the best chance of stopping the clinic closures currently underway, and even more fundamentally that we can build a national strategic counter-offensive that begins to turn the tide throughout society.
The beginnings of this were proudly on display outside the courthouse. Beautiful and strong people, young and old, from across this country converged, together with people from Texas, in front of the courthouse with pictures of the women who have died from illegal abortions in the past, with bloody coat-hangers representing the dangerous means that women have been forced to resort to when abortion is not available, and with shackles representing female enslavement. Two powerful bright orange banners declared, “Abortion Providers Are Heroes!” and, “Forced Motherhood Is Female Enslavement!”
Members of the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride 2014: Ground Zero Texas marched through a prayer gathering of hundreds of anti-abortion protesters and set up right in front of the federal courthouse. One after another, brave volunteers stepped up and spoke out. A young woman told of recently being raped and finding out that she was pregnant with triplets. She felt that she couldn't breathe and would rather have killed herself than be forced to carry that pregnancy to term. She wanted her rapist's DNA out of her body at the soonest possible time and while it was a tremendous horror what led into her need for an abortion, the abortion itself was life-saving, positive and uplifting. She held her head high and declared that after her abortion she wasn't sad or regretful, but was filled with a “post-abortion glow.”
Another young woman told of a dear friend who had needed an abortion but because of restrictions in her midwestern state could not access one. The woman knew the fetus was not healthy, yet was forced to carry the pregnancy to term and give birth to a baby that suffered terribly and died only a few days later. While this young woman was speaking, an anti-abortion protester heckled her, claiming that she had “slipped up and admitted it was a baby.” No matter how many times the young woman and others speaking clarified that saying “she didn't want to have a baby” is not the same as saying that the fetus within her is already a baby (which it is not), the man kept interrupting and heckling and gloating smugly. He had absolutely no regard for the horror the woman in the story had been forced to endure or the fact that he was heckling and harassing a teenager who had the courage and conviction to get up and speak a very difficult and uncomfortable truth. Yet, the young woman persevered, insisting, “My friend now suffers tremendous depression and this should never have been done to her!”
Several young women who the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride has met only recently, including two who drove down all the way from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, joined in chanting and holding signs. They'd never been part of a protest of any kind before and their faces lit up as they listened and participated in the spontaneous speak-out.
A college student took the time to give a science lesson to all who were gathered, including the anti-abortion protesters nearby, reading from the article by A.S.K. in the Revolutionary Worker (now Revolution newspaper, revcom.us) about “What Is an Abortion?” She broke down the difference between fetal life and a full human being. Behind her as she spoke, anti-abortion fanatics held pictures of highly developed fetuses floating, totally erasing the women whose bodies they are part of, just as the anti-abortion movement would erase the humanity and personhood of women.
When challenged, many of the anti-abortion protesters told us straight up that women should, indeed, submit to their husbands as their husbands submit to the lord (Ephesians 5:22) and other Dark Ages Bible passages. All this underscores how dangerous the anti-abortion agenda truly is.
We were happy to see that folks turned out from abortion rights groups from Texas. Mostly they were from a group that has put a lot of energy into waging unprincipled attacks against the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride (these have been responded to in substance by the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride Advisory Board) and stayed physically removed from our protest. A few Abortion Rights Freedom Riders went over to let them know we were glad they turned out. Most of them ignored our volunteers and continued what they were doing. A few of them, including some who have issued physical threats against StopPatriarchy.org, came over and harassed individuals at our protest, calling young women “bitches.” We did not let this distract us. We came to represent for the millions of women whose lives will be foreclosed if these laws go forward and that is who we continued to speak about and for.
It is incredibly important that hundreds of people across the country have contributed funds, testimony, and time to sending the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride down here to Texas. It is incredibly important that we are acting—and giving others a way to act—that is not waiting for or relying on the courts or politicians. As a life-long Texan who is housing some of our volunteers put it today, angrily, “I got an email from Wendy Davis today and yesterday asking me for money and she didn't even mention this trial!” Everywhere we have been (and we'll be writing more about this soon) we have drawn forward the outrage and the stories of women that have been long suppressed. Teams are busy at work as I type, phone-banking everyone we've met throughout Texas to get involved in the coming days, to go out and do outreach on the street to wake more people up to this emergency, and to reach out and draw in people from around the country. We are just getting started!
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