Patients burst into tears on the phone. For once, he was the right guy.
As of Tuesday, at least for a short time, abortion would be legal again in Texas, and Andrea Gallegos had no time to waste. Her clinic, Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services in San Antonio, had been closed since Friday. They had been forced to send patients home when Roe v Wade was canceled, canceling 25 scheduled abortions. Patients who were initially scheduled to come on Monday and Tuesday also missed their appointments.
On Tuesday, his main thought was, how many patients could he see? How many could return today?
He started dialing, first calling the people he had sent home on Friday, then moving on to patients on Monday and then to those initially scheduled for Tuesday. It was the first time in a long time that she felt she had been the bearer of good news.
“They were incredibly grateful to call and contact,” Gallegos said. “His first reaction was, ‘When do you need me there soon?'”
The days since Roe v Wade was overturned have been a swamp of unprecedented legal chaos. States have begun enforcing trigger laws, abortion bans written specifically to take effect if and when federal protections were repealed, as well as statutes like the one in Texas, laws prior to Roe that never have been repealed. But in Louisiana, Utah, Texas and Kentucky, four states where abortion was banned a few days ago, the procedure can be resumed. For now.
Abortion clinics now question these same prohibitions on abortion, arguing in lawsuits in state courts that the laws do not comply with state constitutions or that they are otherwise fundamentally flawed. To date, abortion bans have been temporarily blocked in four states: Texas, Louisiana, Utah and Kentucky.
Now, clinics in these states are figuring out the next steps, or whether they can offer services in a viable way in an indefinite time window.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, Texas officials began enforcing a criminal statute banning the procedure, prior to Roe’s decision. Clinics across the state stopped having abortions.
Almost immediately, abortion rights groups challenged the Texas ban. On Tuesday, a state judge announced he would hear the arguments on July 12, two weeks from now. Until then, assuming the state does not appeal to a higher court more quickly, abortions could be resumed under the state’s six-week abortion ban.
That Tuesday, 10 of the 25 patients on Friday entered the San Antonio de Gallegos clinic to have an abortion. A handful did not pick up the phone. Some told Gallegos that they had found appointments in New Mexico: they would rather wait a few weeks and leave the state to receive attention than take an appointment that could be canceled again.
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And still others who were eligible for an abortion on Friday were already more than six weeks pregnant. The two days without legal access had exceeded the state limit.
Not all clinics in Louisiana, Utah and Texas have re-offered abortions, and some of those that have reopened do so with limited staff as they try to call providers again. In Texas, several Planned Parenthood sites do not yet schedule abortions. But clinic staff say this window feels like a last chance to provide care to people who are often desperate to help. Everyone thinks the window is temporary, and probably short-lived.
“While it was a small feat to only see 10 patients, it was 10 more people who are going to access health care,” Gallegos said. “It’s still a victory.”
Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas, said Wednesday that it was booking patients. Whole Woman’s has specialized in abortion care for two decades and has served as an access point to five states. They plan to continue offering abortions until they are forced to close, said Marva Sadler, senior director of clinical services.
“We’ve always been about abortion going forward, that’s what we do,” Sadler said. “Our work with Texas women is not over.”
All states have still other restrictions on their books. In Texas, Louisiana and Kentucky, patients have to wait 24 hours after their first appointment before they can have an abortion. In Utah, the waiting period is even longer at 72 hours.
The patients who went to the Gallegos clinic on Tuesday had already had the first of the two appointments to be able to have an abortion. But on Wednesday, his staff could not do any of it. At 9 a.m., they began seeing patients for their “preadmissions.” On Thursday, assuming people were still less than six weeks pregnant and another court had not overturned the decision, all those patients could return for their actual abortions.
But they all seem like big assumptions. Gallegos is already warning all patients that it is scheduling that, at some point, their appointments could be canceled again.
“Personally I don’t think we have much time,” Gallegos said. “I’m very surprised if we get it this week.”
In Louisiana, clinics are also running to see as many patients as they can see before July 8, when the first hearing will take place in the case that it granted a temporary restraining order that allowed abortions to resume on Monday.
Amy Irvin, a spokeswoman for the New Orleans Women’s Health Care Center and the Baton Rouge Delta Clinic, two of three statewide abortion clinics, said last week she had heard like a cervical whip.
On Friday, the New Orleans clinic called 65 patients who were scheduled for mandatory counseling appointments before their abortions to let them know they could not be seen that day. Irvin said one patient was so dismayed by the news that she threatened to commit suicide. Clinic staff worked to get him an appointment at the nearest clinic in Colorado, more than 1,000 miles away.
On Monday, when the temporary restraining order was launched to allow abortions to resume, the woman was already many miles away, while many others were making plans to travel to neighboring states, including New Mexico and Illinois, spending hundreds of dollars more to access care. which suddenly became legal again in Louisiana.
On Monday morning, the calls reached the first rejections and new appointments were scheduled while the procedure was temporarily legal again.
The challenge facing clinics in Louisiana, Texas and Utah is now availability.
The two Louisiana clinics were only able to open with a limited schedule this week because part of their staff had already made other arrangements to work. It is already difficult to staff abortion clinics due to the specialized training required: doctors are usually transferred by procedures. The Women’s Health Care Center and the Delta Clinic have opened just one day this week: the Baton Rouge Clinic on Tuesday and the New Orleans Clinic on Thursday. The state’s third clinic, Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, resumed abortions on Tuesday and will continue to offer appointments throughout the week.
“In less than 72 hours, doctors and staff thought they were out of work, unable to see patients, and on Monday, to be notified, the clinic reopened,” Irvin said. “Doctors and staff are being called in a very short time.”
The Women’s Health Care Center and the Delta Clinic hope to open more days next week.
Already, confusion and uncertainty will plunge patients into their pregnancies before they can make a decision on where it will be even legal for them to be able to access abortion care, clinic staff said on the 19th.
More than a thousand miles away, that’s what worries Karrie Galloway, who heads the Utah Planned Parenthood Association, which runs three of the state’s four clinics.
The state government certified its active ban Friday night, allowing a total ban on abortion to take effect immediately. But by then, the clinic was already closed, with 13 patients scheduled for Saturday. That morning, his staff was forced to cancel all these procedures. Some patients had already come to the clinic before they were told abortions were no longer legal in Utah. Others found out over the phone, in calls that Galloway described as “heartbreaking.” Patients were angry, he said. And I could hardly blame them.
“We are telling them that a faceless politician has maintained authority over his own body,” he said.
That day, his organization filed a lawsuit in state court. On Monday, they expected the best: patients filling the waiting room because of the remote possibility that the abortion ban would be lifted that day.
At approximately 3:40 that afternoon, Galloway went downstairs from his office and went straight to the clinic. His lawsuit had been successful. The state judge was going to sign an order that temporarily blocked Utah’s activation law. For at least two more weeks, they could still see patients.
“I felt so good after a lot of bad news after bad news being able to tell people,‘ Okay, we’ll fix it, ’” he said.
Staff at the three Utah Planned Parenthood clinics moved quickly, logging on their shifts immediately and getting to work watching patients. That afternoon, they had five abortions. At all three clinics, 33 more patients were scheduled for the next day.
Galloway staff are scheduled to work at full speed over the next two weeks, providing care up to the state’s 22-week legal limit. There are limits to what they can do. All doctors who work in their clinics have other full-time jobs. Still, he said, they plan to do their best to see as many patients as they can. And in two weeks they will present their case again. He still hopes they can convince the court that even without Roe, the Utah state constitution guarantees the right to abortion: that Utah …