Mary Tuma: Texas is the future of abortion in America

(Mary Tuma is a Texas-based journalist who covers reproductive rights.) For half a year, Roe v. Wade — the 1973 Supreme Court decision that guarantees abortion rights for all Americans — has been effectively moot in the second largest state in the country, home to about 10 percent of the nation’s reproductive-age women. On Sept. 1, the Supreme Court allowed Texas Senate Bill 8 to go into effect — the most restrictive abortion law to do so in the United States since Roe. There’s a good chance that Texans will not see their reproductive rights restored any time soon — because Roe itself could be overturned or gutted before the fate of S.B. 8 is resolved in the courts. Over decades, in one situation after another, Texas has been the epicenter of America’s abortion rights battle. What happens in Texas rarely stays there. I’ve lived in Texas my entire life. I have reported on reproductive rights for 10 years, and what is happening in the state still feels surreal.

An untold number of Texans have suffered under S.B. 8, which bans abortion once embryonic cardiac activity is detected, typically around the sixth week of pregnancy, with no exception for rape or incest. S.B. 8 disproportionately affects vulnerable and marginalized Texans, who are most likely to continue pregnancies against their will, rather than travel to overburdened clinics in neighboring states — a worrisome prospect given the state’s already high maternal mortality rate. Even before S.B. 8 took effect, reproductive rights advocates in Texas felt that most of the country wasn’t paying attention. This may be because many Americans have long regarded Texas politics as nothing but the right-wing fringe — easily dismissed and not to be taken seriously. From a state board of education that has featured creationists to gaffe-prone governors to threats that the state would secede under a Democratic president, Texas is often treated as a punchline. But the state’s policies — on education, gun control, energy, public health and economic regulation — have influenced the national agenda for years, especially in other red states. Texas has been described in the press recently as a “leader” in charting the potential course of the Republican Party nationally.