Between 100,000 and 240,000 women in Texas aged 18 to 49 have tried to induce an abortion at home, according to a new study released on Tuesday.
In the first study of its kind, the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP), run by the University of Texas, attempted to show the prevalence of self-induced abortions in the state in the wake of legislators’ attempts to limit women’s access to abortions. Last week the supreme court agreed to hear a challenge to one of Texas’s most stringent abortion laws, known as HB2, which has led to the closure of more than half the state’s clinics.
Presented alongside the TxPEP data were interviews with 18 women who had tried to end their pregnancies at home – with varying degrees of success and differing medical consequences – in the past five years. The women were interviewed between October 2014 and October 2015.
A 24-year-old from the lower Rio Grande valley used the abortion medication misoprostol to try to end her pregnancy.
“It was the worst cramping I’ve ever had and probably one of the worst pains I’ve gone through,” she wrote. “And there was also the fact that I’m doing it at home, we’re not – though we have all of the information as to how much bleeding is too much bleeding, you know, or that, there’s always that slight uncertainty of, like, I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
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