The Washington Post - USA (2022-04-10)

SUNDAY, APRIL 10 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

Rep. Briscoe Cain (R) issued cease and desist letters in March to every group in Texas that h elps fund abortions, calling them “criminal organizations.” If the Supreme Court over- turns Roe, Vladeck said, there will probably be more of these kinds of charges filed across the country, as other states move to enforce their pre-Roe bans or criminalize the procedure in other ways. In the Herrera case, he added, prosecutors and others involved may be hoping to dissuade people from trying to access abortion in Te xas. One of the goals of this arrest could be to “chill people from getting abortions of any kind,” he noted.

That ban, which criminalizes abortion, is unconstitutional under Roe and is not in effect. Additionally, Vladeck noted, Te xas law explicitly exempts a woman from a criminal homi- cide charge for aborting her pregnancy. He said prosecutors either don’t know about the exception or they have a theory for why the exception does not apply in this case. “It is possible that a prosecu- tor thought, ‘Here’s a novel case I can now bring because of the pressure S.B. 8 has created,’ ” Vladeck said. “Local prosecutors are not necessarily omniscient.” At least one Texas lawmaker has recently tried to enforce portions of the pre-Roe ban. State

immediate release of Lizelle Her- rera.” The arrest comes as Republi- can-led states across the country rush to pass abortion restrictions ahead of a Supreme Court decision this summer that could overturn or significantly weaken Roe v. Wade, the case that has guaranteed abortion access na- tionwide since 1973. Te xas is one of nine states that still has an abortion ban on its books that was passed before Roe. The prosecutors may have made these charges with that pre-Roe ban in mind, said Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Uni- versity of Te xas School of Law who specializes in the federal courts and has closely followed the Texas abortion ban.

Te xas enacted a l aw i n Septem- ber that banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before most women know they are pregnant. In a method meant to evade judicial scrutiny, enforce- ment of the law was left to private citizens rather than state officials. Under the law, called Senate Bill 8, any person can sue anyone who performs an abortion or helps someone get an abortion after six weeks. But that law only has civil consequences, not criminal. Therefore, it’s unclear which law authorities were relying on to charge Herrera. “This arrest is inhumane,” Rockie Gonzalez, founder of Frontera Fund, said in a statement. “We are demanding the

She has been released on bond. Her lawyer, Calixtro Villar- real, declined to c omment. News of Herrera’s arrest was first reported by the Monitor, a newspaper based in McAllen, Te x. Few details surrounding the arrest had been confirmed by Saturday afternoon. A spokes- person for the American Civil Liberties Union of Te xas declined to comment until the organization was able to learn more about the case. It was also unclear whether authorities assert that Herrera had an abortion that violated a law or helped someone else ob- tain one. Neither the Starr Coun- ty Sheriff’s Office nor the district attorney’s office responded to requests for comment.

BY YEGANEH TORBATI AND CAROLINE KITCHENER

A 26-year-old woman in Te xas
was arrested and charged with
murder after what authorities
contended was a “self-induced
abortion,” the Associated Press
reported Saturday.
Lizelle Herrera was arrested
Thursday and taken to the Starr
County jail in Rio Grande City,
along the Rio Grande and the
country’s southern border with
Mexico. In a statement to the AP,
the local sheriff’s office said
Herrera was charged after “in-
tentionally and knowingly caus-
ing the death of an individual by
self-induced abortion,” without
providing details of which legal
statute she had violated.

Texas woman charged with murder after ‘self-induced’ abortion

before the six-week mark, Te xas and Oklahoma patients will be pushed farther afield, to Louisi- ana, Kansas or New Mexico, where clinics are already fully booked. The urgency of the moment is acutely felt at the clinic in San Antonio, Alamo Women’s Repro- ductive Services, and its sister clinic in Tulsa, both of which are owned by Braid, who made na- tional headlines in September for performing an illegal abortion on a patient and writing about it in an opinion piece published by The Washington Post, hoping to prompt lawsuits that would help overturn the law. Since the Te xas ban took effect, Braid has traveled to Oklahoma at least once a month, performing abortions for some of the patients he has had to turn away in Te xas. “A t least there was an alternative,” said Braid. If a ban takes effect in Oklahoma, he said, “I will feel totally helpless.” Braid and his staff recently decided to start telling patients about the pending legislation in Oklahoma. “A re you aware of the Okla- homa law?” the receptionist in San Antonio asked for the third time that morning, as she sched- uled an appointment for another woman who was too far along to

get an abortion in Te xas. “What?” said Nejmin, a 25- year-old mother of two, who, like other patients interviewed for this story, spoke on condition that only her first name be used to protect her privacy. Nejmin had only just learned about the abortion ban in Te xas. Oklahoma’s law “is also chang- ing?” she asked. “We’re not sure yet,” the receptionist said. “If it changes, we’ll call you.” By 9 a.m. on a recent Thursday, almost every seat in the waiting room at the Tulsa Women’s Clinic was taken. The women gathered there that morning looked like they could have been going to a slee-

BY CAROLINE KITCHENER

SAN ANTONIO — The woman
stared up at the ceiling, taking
slow, deep breaths, as the doctor
examined the flickering dot on
the ultrasound screen.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
The gut-wrenching news came
in two parts: The flickering was a
sign of cardiac activity, which
meant the woman could not get
an abortion under Te xas’s six-
week ban. And while the doctor,
Alan Braid, said he would refer
her to a sister clinic in Oklahoma,
where he has sent hundreds of
other patients since the law took
effect last year, she would need to
hurry. Lawmakers there were
close to passing a law just as strict
as the one in Te xas.
The woman cried as the reality
sank in.
By the time she arrived for an
appointment in Oklahoma, abor-
tion could be banned there, too.
As soon as Te xas enacted its
six-week ban, people started flee-
ing the state for abortions. And
while Te xas patients have fanned
out to abortion clinics all over the
country, experts say no state has
absorbed more of them than
neighboring Oklahoma, where
abortions remain legal until the
22nd week of pregnancy.
But that could change soon. As
Oklahoma’s Republican-led legis-
lature has rushed in recent days
to cut off what GOP leaders have
called a “sickening” patient pipe-
line from Te xas — seeking to
enact a raft of new restrictions —
doctors and patients have faced
mounting complications, with
doctors preparing for a sudden
end to abortion access and pa-
tients racing to schedule appoint-
ments before it’s too late.
An all-out ban, which passed
the legislature last week, could
take effect this summer if the
Supreme Court rolls back its
landmark Roe v. Wade decision
protecting abortion rights. More
worrisome to abortion rights ad-
vocates is the likelihood that
Oklahoma moves as early as next
week to enact a Te xas-style ban,
which has thus far survived court
challenges. If Oklahoma’s clinics
stop providing abortions, or are
limited to providing care only

pover. They wore tie-dye joggers, plaid pajama pants, fuzzy slip- pers, Crocs with thick wool socks. Several curled up in hard-backed chairs, feet on the seat, head burrowed in their knees, as a TV at the front of the room spouted news about Ukraine. “People are just really tired when they get here,” said Andrea Gallegos, who is Braid’s daughter and the clinic’s executive administrator. She flies back and forth between the clinics in San Anto- nio and Tulsa. “Some have driven all night to be here first thing in the morning.” A few miles from downtown Tulsa, the abortion clinic faces a park owned by the local Catholic diocese. Antiabortion protesters gather here every day, lining up with their rosaries in front of a towering white cross. “Save your baby!” they yell at patients as they pull into the parking lot. On that Thursday, a third of the cars outside the clinic had Te xas license plates. Tulsa Women’s Clinic started seeing a sharp uptick in Te xas patients as soon as the law took effect in the fall, Gallegos said. In August they treated 28 patients from Te xas. By November, that number had soared to over 300. Of the thousands of patients who left Texas to access abortion between September and Decem- ber, 45 percent traveled to Okla- homa, according to a study from the University of Te xas at Austin, far more than have gone to any other state, with New Mexico coming in a distant second. Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma City have been paying close attention to that surge. “A state of emergency exists in Oklahoma,” said state Senate President Pro Te mpore Greg Treat (R), the leader of the Senate, referring to the number of abortions that have been performed in Oklahoma since the Te xas law took effect. “It’s sickening,” Treat said. “A nd that’s the reason we’re mak- ing every effort to get our laws changed.” Treat has been fighting to end abortion access since he was elected over decade ago. For him

Oklahoma clinics wait for abortion ban

Those who can’t get the procedure in Texas stream across the border, but their window may be closing

PHOTOS BY SEPTEMBER DAWN BOTTOMS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Protesters at a park owned by the local Catholic diocese across from T ulsa Women’s Clinic in Oklahoma on Wednesday. A study from the
University of Texas at Austin found that 45 percent of Texans seeking abortions between September and December went to Oklahoma.

Alan Braid, who owns abortion clinics in Tulsa and San Antonio, made headlines in September for writing an opinion piece in The Washington Post about performing an illegal abortion.

“Some have driven all

night to be here first

thing in the morning.” Andrea Gallegos, executive administrator at the Tulsa Women’s Clinic. In August, the clinic served 28 patients from Texas. In November, after Texas enacted a ban on abortions past six weeks, that number swelled to more than 300.

politics & the nation

and other Oklahoma legislators, he said, antiabortion policies are “at the core of who we are.” Sen. Julie Daniels (R), who sponsored a measure this session modeled after the Te xas ban, said she deeply empathizes with women who find themselves pregnant unexpectedly. She agrees with her Democratic col- leagues that lawmakers need to do more to support those women, she said. But she believes they should limit abortion access at the same time. “I believe in saving the chil- dren even as we work on those other things,” Daniels said. Daniels has been drawn to the novel legal strategy behind Te x- as’s abortion ban, which empow- ers private citizens to enforce the law through civil litigation. To many abortion providers in Oklahoma, the Te xas-style bill is even more concerning than the abortion ban that passed Tues- day, Gallegos said, because it could take effect any day. If an immediate ban is ap- proved, Gallegos said, she imag- ines she might get a call from the clinic’s lawyers in the middle of the workday, as doctors are performing abortions, with a waiting room full of patients who have driven hours to get there. At any moment, she said, the lawyers might tell her it all has to stop. Several abortion clinics in the state stopped scheduling appointments in late March in preparation for that bill to pass. While the Tulsa Women’s Clinic has continued to book appointments through the end of April, Gallegos said, its leaders have wrestled with that decision. “Every day I’m like, ‘Do we stop scheduling?’ ” she said. “There are times when I’m like, ‘A bso- lutely not,’ and other times I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’ ” Gallegos doesn’t want to turn away patients if her clinic can still offer abortion care, she said. But she dreads having to call each patient on the schedule and in- form them that the law has taken effect. Patients have already been struggling to book appointments in Oklahoma. Faith, 24, said she’d tried to schedule an abortion at the clinic where she lives in Oklahoma City. Then she tried a few clinics in Kansas, she said, and she couldn’t get in there quickly, either. When she couldn’t get an ap-

pointment, she said, she opened a private browser and started Goo- gling “alternatives to abortion.” “I Googled the other methods of ending a pregnancy,” Faith said. “Things like, inserting sharp objects, consuming high amounts of things.” She was relieved when she was finally able to get an appointment at the Planned Parenthood in Tulsa, she said. But if she hadn’t been able to access legal abortion in her region, she said, she still would have found a way to terminate her pregnancy. “I’m definitely the kind of person if someone tells me ‘no’ one way, I’m going to go find all the alternative ways to do things,” Faith said. The vast majority of patients at Tulsa Women’s Clinic haven’t heard anything about the loom- ing abortion bans in Oklahoma, said Joey Banks, a doctor who flies in from Montana to provide abortions at the clinic once a month. Bianca, a 29-year-old from San Antonio, first learned about the Oklahoma laws after she found out she was too far along to get an abortion in Te xas. “It made me feel like I am just not in the loop,” she said. “Things are happening too quickly.” Worried that Oklahoma would pass the law before she got to the clinic, Bianca took the first avail- able appointment. On Sunday and Monday, she made the 18- hour round trip drive to Tulsa. When she found out about Oklahoma, Bianca said, she couldn’t help wondering what state was next. If Oklahoma banned abortion, the receptionist told her she could try New Mexico. “But if this whole law passes again in New Mexico, then what?” she said. Two days after Bianca re- turned home from Tulsa, Okla- homa’s House committee on pub- lic health met to discuss the Te xas-style abortion ban that could take effect immediately. Only one lawmaker, Rep. Ajay Pittman (D), asked any questions about the bill. “Can the health department or hospital association talk to the impact that this will have on patients?” she said. “A t this point I would probably request not to,” said Rep. To dd Russ (R), one of the bill’s spon- sors.

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