The Wide-Reaching Impact of SB8
By Abby Cohen
Last fall, America’s most restrictive abortion law, known as Senate Bill 8 or SB 8, went into effect in Texas. Over the past six months there have been nation-wide protests, people seeking abortions out of state, and the Supreme Court hearing two cases, one of them challenging the law. With the Supreme Court having a 6–3 conservative majority, the stakes for Roe v. Wade couldn’t be higher.
SB 8 prohibits most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, only making an exception for medical emergencies which do not specifically include rape, sexual abuse, incest, or the fetus having an untreatable and fatal condition. The law doesn’t define what would constitute a “medical emergency” during pregnancy, a gray area that can result in a wide variety of interpretations and ways it is enforced.
“The cruelty towards women, especially low-income women of color, is the point.”
While SB 8 bans almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, Planned Parenthood has reported that before SB 8 went into effect, roughly 85 percent of abortions in Texas happened after six weeks. So what would getting an abortion within six weeks of pregnancy really look like?
Most people don’t know they’re pregnant until they miss a period and take a pregnancy test, and gestational age is measured from the first day of their last period. This means when they realize they’re pregnant, they’re technically already at least four weeks into the pregnancy, giving them two weeks to get an abortion. Within these two weeks, the state of Texas requires one to:
- Make at least two trips to the abortion provider.
- Receive a sonogram.
- Receive state-mandated paperwork about adoption alternatives, medical risks, and developmental stages of the fetus.
- Wait 24 hours after receiving the sonogram and paperwork before having the abortion.
And Texas requires the doctor who performs the sonogram and abortion to:
- Show the sonogram images to the patient.
- Make any cardiac activity audible.
- Explain the results of the sonogram.
- Read a false statement indicating that there is an increased risk of breast cancer after an abortion.
The uniqueness of SB 8 isn’t solely its degree of restriction. The law allows ordinary, private citizens to enforce it. While they can’t sue the individual receiving the abortion, any citizen can sue clinics and anyone who performs or aids an abortion after six weeks for at least $10,000. This transfers a substantial amount of responsibility the state has to enforce the law over to private citizens, essentially making SB 8 a private law or a private enforcement law.
The executive director of the Berkeley Law Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice, Rachel Johnson-Farias, said, “In addition to the privacy issues this raises, the law could overwhelm the courts with frivolous cases and set a precedent for weaponizing the law against people exercising their constitutional rights.” SB 8 gives people an opportunity to obtain a considerable amount of money through lawsuits, which could increase the likelihood of people weaponizing the law.
On the first of November, the Supreme Court began to hear arguments on SB 8 in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson and on Mississippi’s similar law which bans abortions after fifteen weeks in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is an ongoing case, where the Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of the fifteen-week ban. However, Mississippi has boldly asked the court to overturn Roe v. Wade in order to allow each state to set its own policy. This request would overturn half a century of legal precedent, allowing states to make new, harsher restrictions on abortion, leaving many in crisis.
Regarding SB 8, the Supreme Court decided in an 8–1 ruling that abortion providers can challenge the law, but they can only sue Texas licensing officials. They also ruled that while these challenges are heard, the law will remain in effect. Justice Clarence Thomas went as far to argue that abortion providers shouldn’t be allowed to sue anyone at all. While SB 8 is exclusively in effect in Texas, the law can, and most likely will, have serious consequences to clinics in California as other states try to follow Texas’s lead.
Recent data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports reproductive rights, shows the increase in women who may travel to California for abortion care if the Supreme Court votes in favor of a total ban of abortion, a fifteen-week ban (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization), or a twenty-week ban.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, there are 26 states that are likely or certain to ban abortion. With a fifteen or twenty week ban, there would be a 12 to 13 percent increase in women traveling to California. For the states that won’t ban abortions but are near or surrounded by states that will, the number of women traveling there for an abortion would be even higher. For example, California’s neighboring state Nevada would have a 1,379 percent increase in the case of a fifteen-week ban and a 2,463 percent increase in a twenty-week ban.
Before the Supreme Court started to hear the two cases and before S.B 8 went into effect, 46,000 people were already traveling to California each year for abortion care. If the court decides to impose a total ban, overturning Roe v. Wade, that number would increase by 2,923 percent to 1.4 million. These numbers are people who can afford to travel to California, but what about the people who can’t afford to travel to California or a nearby state that will provide an abortion?
With laws like SB 8, “The cruelty towards women, especially low-income women of color, is the point” as Johnson-Farias stated. And because of this, “Abortion providers throughout the South and Midwest are reporting an increase in clients from Texas seeking safe abortion.”
People of color make up 73 percent of reported abortions in Texas according to a 2018 report from the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it’s safe to say they are going to be impacted the most by SB 8. If everyone had the means to travel for abortion care, the amount of patients seeking care in California would be higher than the concerning number it has already reached.
What you can do to help:
In times like these, it is not only important to challenge and protest the law, but to also help those who are affected by it.
Organizations located in Texas:
- Fund Texas Choice is a non-profit organization that funds Texans’ travel to abortion clinics, arranging and paying for transportation and hotel stays.
- The Lilith Fund is a non-profit organization that helps people pay for an abortion when they can’t afford it.
- Jane’s Due Process is a non-profit organization that provides free legal services and support to young people in order to help them navigate parental consent laws, and confidentially access abortion care and birth control.
- Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas provides sexual health education to teens and parents across North and Central Texas. Donations will help them challenge SB 8 in courts, provide travel assistance to patients that have to leave Texas, provide pregnancy tests so patients can detect a pregnancy as soon as possible, and more.
- ActBlue is a nonprofit organization that provides progressive groups with online fundraising software to help raise money from individual donors. This specific site raises money for pro-choice legal groups and abortion funds, some of them located in Texas. Donations will be split evenly between fifteen organizations.
Donations aren’t the only way you can help. As clinics in California start to have an increase in patients, volunteering to be a clinic escort will help get patients through the door without harassment from anti-abortion protestors. Planned Parenthood offers volunteering positions that are involved in escorting patients, helping with education programs, and more.
