Earlier today, our president and CEO, Amy Hagstrom Miller, sat down with Refinery29’s Vote Your Values to talk about being the lead plaintiff in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, and what’s at stake with the Supreme Court case that could be announced any day now.

In particular, Amy told a story we’ve become all too familiar with since the passage of HB2, of a woman trying to access care with no available clinics in her area.  You can read the story below and watch the full conversation (well worth the 30 minutes) here.

“We’ve heard from so many people. This law didn’t do anything to prevent the need from unplanned pregnancy. It didn’t reduce the number of people who need abortion care. It just cut off women’s access to quality care. The same amount of women in the communities we serve need abortion care. 

We had a woman call us from Lubbock, which is in west Texas. The clinics there have all closed because of HB2. She was a single mom, a working mom of three, and we had to tell her that she had to travel 35o miles to Dallas/Fort Worth to get an abortion. And she called us about six times during the course of her pregnancy, trying to figure out how to get time off work, afford gas, travel round trip, get childcare. By the time she was actually got her ultrasound she was too far along in her pregnancy to have an abortion in the state of Texas. 

That’s not in the best interest of women’s health and safety. When she called us she was eight weeks into her pregnancy. [That would have been] a risk-free, first trimester abortion, which is a totally normal part of reproductive health care. But, because of these laws it pushed her further into the pregnancy, into the second trimester, and actually it endangered her health.

That’s why it absolutely drives me crazy when people by into the spin of ‘women’s health and safety’ in our best interest, because it couldn’t be further from the truth.”