Abortion in Texas
One year after the Supreme Court decision we survey how hospitals and private citizens are responding to legalized abortion.
There are other options to an unwanted pregnancy, but none is so controversial. How available are abortions today, where are they done, and what has legalizing them meant?
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Black, white, chicana, young, old, working, not working, married, unmarried—there are lots of different kinds of women. Most of them can become pregnant and most do at some time or another. Most are happy at the thought of having a child, but for a woman who is pregnant and doesn’t want to be, a pregnancy can be one of the most devastating events of her life.
For a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy, questions about laws, or attitudes, or facilities are secondary. So are lectures about birth control, morals, and what the neighbors will think. For this woman, the prime question is “What am I going to do?” She needs help and she needs it fast—an unwanted pregnancy is an emergency.
The Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics does not keep information on how many abortions are done in this state each year. If they did, the number would probably be larger than most people think. The only available statistics are estimates from private clinics and counseling services. In Austin, it is estimated that at least 1500 women seek abortions each year. In Houston, a source at Planned Parenthood said that as many as 4000 abortions have been done in that city since Spring, 1973. Planned Family Clinic in Dallas is doing an average of 80 abortions a week—that’s 4160 a year for one clinic.
Who seeks abortions? Texans involved in helping women with problem pregnancies will tell you that most are between the ages of 18 and 25, but that the range is from 12 to 40 years old. They are from all walks of life. Most are white, but blacks and chicanas are looking more toward the legal abortionist as the service becomes available. If you’re interested in astrology, the PeopIe’s Free Clinic in Austin has found that more Scorpios come for problem pregnancy counseling than any other sign. More seriously, about half the women with problem pregnancies were not using any form of birth control at the time they became pregnant. Reasons for this vary—the most frequent one is ignorance. Sometimes, women become pregnant when their physicians are changing them from one form of birth control medication to another. Other women just weren’t using effective methods.
Not all women choose abortion. A woman who has no regard at all for the life of her child is hard to find. The decision to end a pregnancy or to give a child up for adoption is influenced by love for the child, not merely love for self. There are alternatives to abortion. Women may choose to keep the child or to give it up to an adoption agency. While this is not as frequent a practice as it once was, good maternity homes such as the Edna Gladney Home in Fort Worth report that they have not experienced much of a drop in occupancy since the Supreme Court ruling was handed down. Other “homes” are experiencing drops, but are still in business.
No matter how difficult it may be to obtain an abortion, the decision and the responsibility rest with the woman. She must choose. She must seek help. She must bear the final responsibility. She must remember.
THE FUTURE
Despite the Supreme Court ruling, the fight between those who favor abortion and those who oppose it is still raging. The latter groups are more organized and better financed. Texas Right to Life, a statewide, anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia organization, was organized last summer. Right to Life groups in Dallas and Houston have been active for some time. Dr. Joseph Witherspoon, professor of law at The University of Texas School of Law, is state president of the organization. He also is one of the principal authors of the “Right to Life” amendment (sponsored by Senator James Buckley, Conservative, N.Y.) which is being pushed for adoption as an amendment to the United States Constitution.
Right to Life regards itself as pro-life rather than anti-abortion. Mary Jane Phelps, executive director of the organization, says that regardless of the fact that the Supreme Court decision “constitutes a danger to all life,” a reverence for life is essential. Phelp says that abortion is a quick negative response to a pregnancy and that women should realize that undergoing an abortion is absolute degradation, an effort to conceal the fact that they are able to have children—and thus are women in the most important sense.
Right to Life, and Birthright, a similar group, lobby for reversal of the Supreme Court decision on the national level and for restriction of abortion availability on the state level. The group is famous for its literature, which is copiously illustrated with color pictures of aborted fetuses. The Right to Life office is crammed with stacks of brochures, newsletters, “Circle of Life” bracelets (which are to be worn until the Supreme Court decision is reversed) , and anti-abortion posters. The literature ranges from simple newsletters—one of which proclaims Right to Lifers are not “fetus freaks”—to elaborate brochures. In one issue of the National Right to Life News,the reader will find that he can send for “photo-postcards of aborted babies (to send to legislators) 10/$1, 25/$2, 500/$20.”
Right to Life gets a lot of criticism for this kind of literature—which physicians have called “inflammatory” and “exaggerated.” The group’s response is that people must be made aware of the reality of abortion, and it is true that the results of a salting out procedure are ugly. Pro-abortion groups counter with the fact that the results of procedures done by illegal abortionists are just as ugly, and that, too, is true. So in order to argue the question on a more rational basis, Right to Life says that the Supreme Court decision to allow abortions is a foot in the door for more sweeping decisions which will allow euthanasia and genocide.
Pro-abortion groups in Texas are not nearly as well organized as the opposition. The only formal committee is Texas Citizens for Abortion Education, a Dallas-based lobbying group which is working to keep the Roe v. Wade decision in effect. Virginia B. Whitehill, state coordinator for TCAE, says that the group’s work is aimed mainly at the federal level right now. She feels that there is a definite possibility that abortion will be outlawed again or that so many restrictions will be placed on the procedure that the decision will be negated. As examples of legislation she feels is threatening, Whitehill points out that a rider on the U.S. foreign aid bill which recently passed the Senate forbids U.S. birth control agencies in other countries to give counselor aid to women seeking abortion. The definition of “abortion” in that bill, says Whitehill, includes the use of intrauterine devices (IUDs)—a principal tool of family planning agencies in underdeveloped countries.
She also claims that groups like Right to Life are financed by the Roman Catholic Church—although evidence is not clear. Whitehill says the black genocide uproar and the publicity surrounding the case of the two young girls who were sterilized in Alabama were stirred up by anti-abortion groups.
Whitehill has been working for birth control services for women for along time. “I used to sneak into Parkland with a typewriter,” says Whitehill, “and get a list of all the women who had had children recently so I could send them birth control information. Ed Maher, the head of the Dallas hospital district, would not discuss birth control with us—he told us birth control had nothing to do with health.”
Representative Sarah Weddington of Austin also feels that there is a danger of the decision being reversed or its impact diluted. “I feel discouraged that the decision isn’t being carried out after we went through the Supreme Court fight,” she says. Weddington feels that there certainly will be anti-abortion amendments and bills offered at the Constitutional Convention and during the next session of the Legislature, but doesn’t think it would be advisable for pro-abortion forces to offer any new bills or amendments. Instead, she would prefer that the state remain neutral. If pro-abortion bills were offered, they might only serve to make the situation worse because of the chance of amendment. “Right now, I’m fighting a holding action,” says the attorney.
There is evidence for the qualms expressed by Whitehill and Weddington. Anti-abortion forces are working for the U .S. Constitutional amendment, and simultaneously working to pass regulatory legislation limiting the effects of the Supreme Court decision. Family planning clinics funded by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) are not allowed to do abortion referral. A bill sponsored by Senator James Buckley just came out of a U.S. Senate committee and would forbid use of Medicaid money to pay for abortion, even to save the life of the mother. Anti-abortion forces are bombarding state and national legislators with literature on the subject. A Fort Worth woman says that when she wrote a pro-abortion letter to a Texas legislator, she received a whole packet of anti-abortion material in return. All Baptist ministers in the state have been sent packets of such material.
In America in March 1974, abortion is still a legal alternative for a woman who decides to terminate her pregnancy. It is not a universally available alternative in Texas, and the possibility exists that it will become less so. The issue is highly charged with emotion. On one side it is argued that the only person who should decide whether or not to choose abortion is the pregnant woman; on the other, it is argued that no one should ever have this choice.
The reality of the abortion issue is that the choice of the pregnant woman to have an abortion has an extended impact: on doctors; on hospitals and their staffs; on the father; and, depending on your point of view, on an unborn human being. The state may become legally involved through its legislators.
The certainty of the abortion issue is that, while a woman’s decision to have an abortion affects many other segments of society, the reverse is not necessarily true. The only influence that society can have on a woman who wants an abortion is whether it will be legal or illegal. Women who are desperate will find a way. Jan did. So will others.
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