At Texas Abortion Clinic, Staff and Patients Grapple With Court Ruling

The New York Times
At Texas Abortion Clinic, Staff and Patients Grapple With Court Ruling
By ERIK ECKHOLM
OCT. 3, 2014

A day after a federal appeals court allowed stringent new abortion restrictions to take effect in Texas, patients arrived on Friday at Whole Woman’s Health in McAllen, a town in the Rio Grande Valley, to be told that they must travel 240 miles north to San Antonio to find one of the seven clinics that meet the state’s new construction and staffing requirements.

Whole Woman’s Health was one of 13 clinics across the state forced to stop performing abortions on Friday.

For the staff as well as the patients, it was a day of counseling and reassessment, and some patients went ahead with lab work as they considered when and how they could make the journey to another clinic. About 35 to 40 women had scheduled abortions at the McAllen center over the weekend, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, the chief executive for Whole Woman’s Health.

“We’re trying to figure out how to remain open, almost like a safe house, even though we can’t provide abortion services,” Ms. Miller said in a telephone news conference. “The need for care in the valley remains, women are coming to our doors asking for assistance, and we’ll do our best to help women get the help they deserve.”....

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