The distance to the nearest clinic is only one of the problems that Texas patients now face, said Alan Braid, the owner and medical director of Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services in San Antonio. Many patients are already mothers, and cannot leave their jobs or their children for the length of time needed to access care in another state. Some are undocumented and
cannot travel with ease.
“It sounds very easy — oh well, you can’t get it in Texas, just go to Oklahoma, New Mexico. But the people that we see — that hourly wage patient, the single mom, the people that don’t have the means to travel — it’s impossible for them,” he said. “That’s like saying well, just hop on a plane and, you know, go to France. It’s beautiful there, you can get an abortion and then take a walk down the Champs-Élysées.”
Braid, who has been providing abortion care in Texas since he began his OB/GYN internship in 1972, said this was the worst climate he had ever seen for reproductive rights in Texas since before
Roe v.
Wade. The new law, with its vigilante-enforcement scheme, is spreading fear and distrust. “You can feel it in the room,” he said. “It hangs heavy.” As a provider, he said, he is usually optimistic that he can support his patients and meet their needs. “Now, when I walk in the room, I have huge doubts about whether I’m going to be able to help,” he said. “I’m not used to that.”
He expressed deep concern about what patients will do to obtain abortions if they can’t get one inside Texas when they need it. He still has a powerful memory of three teenagers dying from septic shock and organ failure after obtaining back-alley abortions back when he was an intern in 1972.
“That’s where we’re headed,” he said. “I promise you that people are going to cross the border to Mexico. They’re going to self-induce.”
.
