ARGYLE, Texas – Two days after the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade, a 27-year-old woman, gave birth to her fourth child, a boy she named Cason. Born after his mother fled domestic abuse and was denied an abortion, he is one of the first of many post-Roe babies expected in Texas.
“I love my children and I feel like I’m a very good mother,” says Cason’s mother, who asked to be identified by her first initial, T. “But because of this pregnancy I could not provide for them. not.”
One in 10 people of reproductive age in America lives in Texas, which will soon join half of all states to ban almost all abortions. Texas’ conservative leadership has spent decades curtailing access to abortions while reducing social spending and publicly-funded health care. Now even some anti-abortion advocates say their state is pitifully unprepared for a likely increase in births among poor women.
The overthrow of Roe “creates the feeling of urgency that will now hopefully create the resources. But unfortunately, there is that gap, ”said Aubrey Schlackman, founder of Blue Haven Ranch, a non-profit abortion organization that provides housing and other assistance to T.’s family.
“We do want to limit abortions,” she said. Schlackman continued. “But we personally were not ready to deal with an influx, and I know so many of the other non-profit organizations we work with are not ready for that either.”
Texas is one of the most dangerous states in the country to have a baby. The state’s maternal mortality rate is one of the worst in the country, with black women making up an excessive proportion of deaths. The state’s infant mortality rate, at more than five deaths per thousand births in 2020, amounts to almost 2,000 infant deaths annually.
Texas has chosen not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which has helped lead to hospital closures and the formation of rural health care “deserts,” where obstetricians are scarce and antenatal care even scarcer. More than a quarter of women of childbearing age are uninsured, the highest rate in the country. Medicaid covers low-income women through pregnancy and for two months postpartum, compared to 12 months in most states.
A proposal in the Texas House to extend postpartum coverage to 12 months was cut by the State Senate to six months. Tens of thousands of children born to low-income parents are on the waiting list for subsidized childcare.
In September last year, Texas Senate passed Bill 8, which bans abortions for patients with observable embryonic heart activity, which usually begins about six weeks later. A recent Times analysis indicates that Texas’ abortion rate fell by only 10 percent after the bill was passed as more women traveled out of state or ordered medication abortions by mail. But poor patients often do not have those options.
From Opinion: The End of Roe v. Wade
Comments by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s decision to end the constitutional right to abortion.
“If only 10 percent of women are unable to have an abortion, it’s a massive increase in fertility,” said Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who advocates religious freedom, health law and equality. study.
“There is no way that there are any institutions that are willing to meet that demand.”
Three years ago, T. was an accountant for a chain of fitness centers. At $ 36 an hour, it was the highest paid job she’s ever held. She was proud to become her family’s main breadwinner after her partner, with whom she had been since high school, lost his construction job during the pandemic. But early in her pregnancy with Cason, she developed complications that eventually forced her to quit her job.
The family saved and moved into smaller and smaller houses until the end of last year, when they finally had to move in with her partner’s mother. The couple was unloading their belongings, with their baby daughter in her stroller nearby, when “he hit me,” T. said. Her partner choked her, she said, until she lost consciousness. When she was revived by a stranger, she struggled to speak, and a ring of bruises pulled around her neck. Terrified of her children, she fled the next morning to a shelter for victims of domestic violence, she said.
She said she had never sought an abortion before. But the prospect of raising four young children on her own, and of giving birth alone, filled T. with desperation. She worried about the needs of her three children, and about sacrifices. “If I do, I’ll make sure they’re always good, always taken care of,” she said she remembers thinking.
“It was a very difficult decision, but I felt it was a smart one for me.”
Her sister drove her to the Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center, an abortion provider in Dallas. But Texas has just introduced Senate Bill 8, and suppliers told T. she was about seven weeks pregnant – too far for an abortion in Texas. Can she travel to New Mexico? In the waiting room, T. sobbed. The journey was impossible. She had no money, and so few childcare options that she brought her baby daughter with her to the appointment. She did not know about medication abortion.
T. rejoined her sister, who was waiting in the parking lot. She was sitting helplessly in the car when an anti-abortion “sidewalk counselor” approached.
“‘You are not alone. If you are pregnant and you need help, we can help you,'” the sidewalk counselor told her, remembering T ..
“I was just starting to cry,” T. said, “in a sense of relief.”
The next day, the woman who met T. in the parking lot led her to Birth Choice, a resource center against abortion-pregnancy in the same office complex as the abortion provider.
Some anti-abortion crisis maternity centers have come under scrutiny for misleading or misinforming women seeking abortion care. But in that moment, “They asked me the perfect questions,” T. said of the Birth Choice counselor. “Am I okay? Are my children doing well? What did I need?
“Note, I left everything,” she said. “They provided me with everything right there: baby bag, nappies, formula, clothes for me. They even gave me some clothes for my daughter and a toy, ”said T.
“Then my counselor comes back and says, ‘I found you a place.’
The location was Blue Haven Ranch, based in Argyle, about 45 minutes from Dallas.
Blue Haven provides housing, help with household accounts, job training, and financial and other counseling for up to a year or more after delivery for pregnant women with existing children. Among Americans seeking abortion care, 60 percent are already mothers, and half have two or more children. Most are in their late 20s and poor.
Ms Schlackman, 34, a former dental hygienist, evangelical Christian and mother of two, founded Blue Haven in 2020.
She grew up believing that women seek abortion care for convenience. “Now I can understand why they would choose it,” she said.
Ms Schlackman requires women to attend group information sessions with a strong religious component in a community church on Monday evenings. Blue Haven is not looking for money from the government or anyone else who might question its religious approach. It takes in donations from abortion rights supporters as well as opponents, Ms. Schlackman said as he read a note from someone who sent $ 50: “‘I do not share your beliefs about abortion and Christianity, but I hope you will use your power to encourage similar initiatives elsewhere.'”
Blue Haven supports five families, and there are 12 on the waiting list. The cost is about $ 2,500 per family per month for housing and utilities, plus gas and unexpected household expenses. A Boston financier who read about Blue Haven and offered to help recently negotiated a used car deal for a mom with a bad credit score.
Currently there is no farm; the families live in rented apartments. Ms Schlackman and her husband Bryan have plans to buy a piece of undulating space outside Denton, Tex., And build a complex with small houses, a meeting house and group kitchen, plus open spaces and livestock for “farm therapy.”
While standing in the wheat field where she envisions the houses, Ms. Schlackman estimates she will have to raise $ 13 million for land, construction and three years of operating funds. After Roe was overthrown, Blue Haven received $ 25,000 in donations within two days.
The focus on the Bible and emphasis on Christian family ideals makes some Blue Haven mothers uncomfortable. But for T., the group offered a lifeline in a time of dwindling options. One recent Monday night, she attended a group session while her children played on the church’s pristine playground, under the supervision of grandparents’ volunteers. Other volunteers hosted a communal dinner.
Blue Haven threw a baby shower for T., and his fans bought everything on a register that Ms. Schlackman created. (T. chose a zoo theme for her son’s layettes, in shades of blue and green.) When Cason was born, me. Schlackman there and attended T. in the spooky birth center where she gave birth to her own sons.
Blue Haven’s assistance will end about a year after Cason’s first birthday.
“The pressure is really going on,” T. said on a Thursday, four days after giving birth to Cason. “I have one year to rebuild my life while my body heals, and four children to take care of at the same time. It’s scary. I try not to think about what will happen when I leave the program. I know I can be a wonderful mother, it’s just, can I provide for my children, keep the children healthy and safe and have a roof over our heads, and food? ”
She hopes, she said, to get another job as an accountant and eventually move into her own home.
She said she has a message for the Texas Legislature.
“You do not know what is best for any family, you did not protect me or my children. I protect my children. Only a mother can know what is best for her and her family. And if you are going to force women to have all these babies for which they are not equipped, then you have to provide support to women and their children after the babies are born. ”
Earlier this week, just a day and a half after the birth, T. still had something to say.
“Women, all we really have is our dignity and our voices,” she said. “And you take them away.”
Erin Schaff reported on Argyle, and Margot Sanger-Katz from Washington.