Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, there was S.B. 8 in Texas.
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"I have already experienced a preview of your future," a 27-year-old woman told the Opinion video team about her pursuit earlier this year of a self-induced abortion in Texas. |
She had $187 in her bank account, and she knew it wasn't the right time for her to have a baby. |
Before the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Texas had already enacted a law outlawing most abortions in September 2021. Texans have been living with obstacles that many more Americans across the country are now going to encounter. |
Our hope in telling this story is to shed light on the journey involved in navigating a changing political landscape while raising understanding of self-managed medication abortion. |
A 2020 Kaiser study showed that only "about one-fifth of adults (21 percent) and one-third of women between the ages of 18 and 49 (36 percent) have ever heard of Mifepristone, or a medication abortion." Those numbers may start to shift with the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe, but that knowledge gap was one of our driving motivations to make this video. |
Telling stories about things that happened in the past always creates challenges for visual journalists. We weren't there in the moment. But with this story, we had additional hurdles to overcome. What does fear really look like? Nausea? Blood loss? How about pain? How do you depict a race against the clock or the process that allowed this woman to get pills when it happened in the digital world? And how do you do all of those things without showing your subject? While we did include her real voice, we kept her identity anonymous for her protection. |
This woman was motivated to tell her story because she hopes others can learn from it. But she did so at great personal risk. Medication abortion is legally risky in places where abortion rights are being restricted. There are numerous examples of prosecutors targeting women and the people who help them. |
We owe the woman who worked with us a great deal of gratitude for being brave enough to speak out, and hopefully to make it a little less confusing and lonely for those who are going through the same experience. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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