“SB8 in Texas Is Not Some Abstract Law, It Will Kill People”
Professor and activist Ruby Montana on abortion rights, the dangerous stronghold of Catholicism, and the dubious fate of women in Texas.
This is the first of a three-part series THE PUBLIC is doing on reproductive justice in America. Read the second article about why SB8 in TX gives the anti-choice movement free license “to do whatever they want” right here.
Ruby Montana is no stranger to juxtapositions. To tensions arising from seeming contradictions. From brushing up against big questions that ask us to reconsider our world-views. She welcomes them in fact. She’d like the state of Texas to do some reckoning of its own.
Born and raised on the border of El Paso, Montana teaches ethics and philosophy at El Paso Community College and humanities at the University of Texas at El Paso. The issue of abortion is one of the many moral dilemmas she has taught for more than a decade.
“Here in El Paso, where the majority of people are Hispanic, and with that the majority of them being Roman Catholic, my students come in with a pretty absolutist view that they have been indoctrinated with from a very early age that abortion is wrong, no matter what, no exception.”
She worries that cultural relativism — basing ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ upon one’s often arbitrary if long-held cultural norms — doesn’t just dictate her students’ lives, but the very state of Texas. 64% of Texas residents identify as “highly religious.”
“Cultural relativism is a very tempting theory to accept and to normalize. And it’s very similar to the idea that ‘well, everyone has their religious beliefs and everyone is entitled to their opinion right? Who are we to judge?’ And yes. Everyone is entitled to their own traditions and cultures and norms and everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but that doesn’t make them right and that doesn’t make them all good. And that is why we need to think objectively.”
Montana says we have to look past our own faith or culture to determine healthy, just public policies and the true nature of morality should operate outside tangled societal webs.
“One of the dangers of cultural relativism is how tempting it is to think that because your religion, your background, your upbringing says that it’s right, therefore it is, right. ‘This is how my people do it.’ But that’s not how morality should work at all, that’s just dangerous.”
And, Montana adds, “I guarantee you that pretty much 10 out of 10 of the times, my students will incorrectly say, well, ‘it’s in the Bible!’ They don’t understand that actually, that basis of morality from the Catholic Church stems from the natural law theory, which was created by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. We need to understand that humanity changes — we as a people evolve — and as we change, our morality should change too. I think once they realize that the Catholic Church has held that position, literally, since the 1200s, without any sort of flexibility, then it gives them pause.”
Montana says she leans on data and statistics to illustrate to her students that their belief system would quickly condemn their own community. SB8 will create devastating consequences for already deeply underserved communities and individuals from teenagers like themselves — who often don’t realize they are pregnant until it’s “too late” — to low-income folks for whom $550 in abortion costs is prohibitive, and people of color, including undocumented immigrants. In 2019, 70% of abortions in Texas in were provided to women of color.
“Once I show them these numbers around Hispanic women here in their community who are the most affected by these laws, that’s when it brings it closer to home. They need to realize that if they are Hispanic, this will affect either them personally or someone they love.”
Montana often cites the heartbreaking case of a young Indian woman — Savita Halappanavar — who died in Ireland due to a complicated miscarriage. The hospital — due to its Catholicism — wouldn’t give her an abortion.
“She was only 31 years old — that’s natural law theory in action. I want people who are so quick to make this sweeping condemnation of abortion using Catholicism or any other tenet of Christianity, really any religion — I want them to understand that they are trivializing the complexities of abortion. This is not just some abstract law. No. It kills people.”
Montana has tasted this fear herself. Juarez — El Paso’s sister city — is literally “a stone’s throw” from El Paso and has, Montana says, “a very long history of violence. It was considered to be the most dangerous city in the world for several years.” But El Paso? It’s consistently rated as one of the safest cities in America.
But for Montana, the fear isn’t about Juarez as a city, it’s about El Paso’s lack of access.
“I know how difficult it is to get contraception here in El Paso. Having been an adjunct professor since I started my career, right in 2010, I don’t have the option of health insurance. I’m one of the thousands and thousands of Americans who go without health insurance every year. The only reason I have it right now is because of my domestic partnership. That’s the only reason.”
Montana says that she would be unprepared financially to see a pregnancy through and would receive no maternity leave as she’s an adjunct; her only option would be to leave her job and lose any income at all.
“Now because we live on the border, I am able to compare the cost of accessibility of contraception with our sister city Juarez. If I go through the ‘right way’ here in El Paso, Texas in the United States, access to birth control would cost anywhere between $75 and $100 a month, which is ridiculous. That’s one month of birth control. But if I take a little walk to the right, which I can literally do from where I live, I can get it over the counter in Juarez for the equivalent of about 8 American dollars. That’s a huge disparity.”
Montana says she’s not afraid to go to Juarez. She speaks Spanish. She has brown skin and black hair. “But what if someone is afraid? Juarez is a dangerous city and it has been for a long time. I understand that certain people would absolutely not consider going there as an option.”
Mexico recently decriminalized abortion — despite it being a deeply Catholic country — and Montana felt an initial rush of relief that an option would be available for Texan women right across the border.
“Here on the border, people come from all over the greater Southwest area to get dental or health care. So I was thinking, ‘Wow, maybe women’s healthcare will be like this! I thought at least there might be a bus.’”
But Montana quickly realized that the decriminalization of abortion in Mexico is still very muddy — public hospitals could still object to the procedure, and it’s illegal in the entirety of Chihuahua — the closest Mexican state to the border. And while it’s legal in Las Cruces, New Mexico (the American city closest to El Paso) there are very real barriers to entry.
“Las Cruces might be easy for people who have access to money — white upper-class women, but it’s certainly not going to be easy for low-income, women of color. We have to think about the obstacles. How do we know that they have money to drive to Las Cruces? How do we know that they have money to get an appointment? Because they probably don’t have health insurance? And it’s not covered by health insurance anyway.”
Montana says there is an overwhelming sense of fear since SB8 passed. And that fear is completely legitimate.
“Every woman in the state of Texas who can get pregnant — even if they have not vocalized it in some way, shape, or form — has this cloud of fear. ‘Could this happen to me? What would I do? What lengths would I go to?’ How far will these women drive?
Who’s to say that they’re not going to misunderstand the decriminalization of abortion, go to Chihuahua and put themselves in some sort of predicament? We just don’t know. This should be a dystopian fantasy, not real life in the state of Texas in 2021. My fear is what’s next, what’s next?”
Editor’s Note: All perspectives are Montana’s and do not reflect those of El Paso Community College or the University of Texas at El Paso.
