Texas gynecologist admits breaking law by aborting woman
Pro-abortion protesters march through the streets of Edinburgh, Texas towards City Hall on September 1, 2021 as new abortion law comes into force.
© AP / The Monitor / Joel Martinez
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Doctor Alan Braid, an American obstetrician gynecologist, publicly declared in a
Washington Post
column to
have performed voluntary termination of pregnancy, in violation of recent law passed in Texas.
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“
For me, it's like we were back in 1972,
” writes Alan Braid, a 45-year doctor in San Antonio, South Texas.
At the time, he was a young intern in obstetrics and gynecology and the abortion was illegal.
He remembers these three teenage girls who died following clandestine abortions, one of whom arrived at the hospital with a vagina filled with rags who died of a skeptical infection.
This is how the tribune of Doctor Braid begins, who admits to having performed an abortion on September 6 and is thus exposed to at least 10,000 dollars in
fines
, since the passage of the SB 8 law.
► To read also: Abortion almost prohibited in Texas
80% fewer abortions since the new law
Her clinic had to reduce abortions by 80% since it is now forbidden to terminate a pregnancy beyond six weeks.
Early enough to hear a heartbeat, too early for most women to realize they are pregnant.
“
The women who come to see us have legitimate reasons for wanting to have an abortion,
” he says: too young, in financial difficulty or victims of rape.
Many are already mothers.
The two clinics in which Dr. Braid works have sued the new Texas law, as has the
Department of Justice
, which is seeking its annulment.
Influx into neighboring states
The Supreme Court has so far refused to block this law which entered into force on September 1 in this vast conservative state.
Since then, medical personnel in neighboring states have observed an influx of desperate women into their clinics: a minor raped, a beaten woman, a patient carrying an unviable fetus ...
From September 1 to 12, her clinic in Tulsa, Oklahama, terminated the pregnancies of 69 Texans and 240 others have already made appointments for the following weeks, assures Joshua Yap, doctor for the organization Planned Parenthood.
And waiting times are getting longer.
Since September 1, the organization Fund Texas Choice, which provides logistical assistance to women wanting to have an abortion, has seen the number of calls increase from ten per week to more than ten per day.
Appointments are being made in increasingly distant clinics from Texas, to Seattle, in the northwest of the United States, according to the organization.
►
See also: United States: attacks are increasing against the right to abortion [Analysis]
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