Texas neighbors report influx of women seeking abortions

Multiple health clinics outside Texas are seeing an influx of women seeking abortions weeks after the state’s new restrictive abortion law took effect, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Administrators at the neighboring state health clinics said that they have been overwhelmed with out-of-state patients.

Louisiana’s Hope Medical Group for Women administrator Kathaleen Pittman told the Journal that her clinic has been adding evening hours to get patients more appointments. 

Pittman shared that some patients are struggling with the cost to travel to her clinic and taking time off of work, according to the Journal. 

“Because of the delay, they’re going to be farther along,” she said. 

The law signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) effectively bans abortions at six weeks, before many women realize they’re pregnant. It authorizes citizens to sue those who help women get the procedure.

Several Texas-based clinic workers have reportedly quit under the new law, worried they could face legal action for doing their jobs.

Whole Woman’s Health founder Amy Hagstrom Miller told the Journal that her four Texas clinics have had to turn away 80 percent of patients since the law went into effect.  

According to an analysis from the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute, the average Texas woman of childbearing age is 17 miles away from an abortion clinic but is 247 miles away from an out-of-state clinic. 

Andrea Gallegos, executive administrator of the Tulsa Women’s Clinic in Oklahoma, reportedly said that at least 70 percent of the facility’s patients are now coming from Texas.

The Biden administration has sued to block the Texas law, which has become a rallying cry for Democrats. Last week, 24 Democratic state attorneys generals moved to support that legal action.