AUSTIN (KXAN) – State and national abortion rights leaders took to a South By Southwest panel Sunday afternoon to discuss ways women continue to access abortions in Texas despite the state having some of the strictest laws in the country.
Among the women on the panel was former Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, now a senior adviser to Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, who said pregnancy can be a dangerous condition when women do not have access to life-saving abortion care.
“We’ve seen that time and time again since the abortion bans have been in place in Texas,” she told KXAN. “We know that sepsis rates have increased by 50% in our state and that our maternal mortality rates and our infant mortality rates are skyrocketing.”
Even though laws that prohibit nearly all abortions have been on the books in Texas since 2022, thousands of Texans are still able to terminate pregnancies each year.
“The panel today is talking about how, in the face of abortion bans in Texas and elsewhere, people are still able to access care,” Davis said.
“People are leaving the state to get the care that they need in states that do provide it,” she said. “[Others] are able to avail themselves of telehealth medicine and get a prescription for abortion medication if they’re in the weeks prior to their 13th week of pregnancy.”
#WeCount, a project from the Society of Family Planning, reported that around 2,800 Texas women monthly in the first six months of 2024 acquired abortion medications, like Mifepristone, through telehealth medicine.
“Of course, there’s a lawsuit that is trying to do away with abortion medication altogether,” Davis said.
In January, a Texas judge ruled that three states could move ahead with another attempt to roll back federal rules and make it more challenging for people to access mifepristone in the U.S. Additionally, one bill filed in the Texas House of Representatives aims to add criminal and civil penalties for providing abortion-inducing drugs in Texas.
Despite these efforts, Davis said she believes a majority support more access to abortion procedures than is allowed currently in Texas. She encouraged SXSW attendees Sunday to make their voices heard at election time.
“The only way we can change policies is to change policymakers. It’s that simple,” she said.
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