Jasmine took out a loan of $1,350 to pay for it all. With interest, she believes that it’ll balloon to around $1,500 by the time she’s paid it back. Had she been able to get an abortion that day, in Texas, the whole thing would’ve likely cost Jasmine $650. “I actually am currently in debt already, so this just adds fuel to the fire,” Jasmine said. Her curly black hair piled in a bun on top of her head, Jasmine wore a Michael Jackson T-shirt and plaid slippers. One slipper read “Mama.” The other, “Bear.”Since Sept. 1, when Texas enacted SB8, a law that bans abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, people like Jasmine have sought the procedure beyond the Lone Star State’s borders. Last week, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which runs clinics across Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada, announced it had seen 106 Texan patients in September—a 130 percent spike. The group that runs the Oklahoma City clinic where Jasmine got her abortion, Trust Women, also has a location in Wichita, Kansas. That clinic saw just one Texan patient in August 2021; by the end of September, it had seen 51.“I'm not ready to bring another life into this world that I can't support.”
Jasmine had never driven out of state before, and doing so at night made her anxious and irritable. The sheer injustice of having to do this at all pricked at her. She did everything right, she told me. She was on birth control. She’d taken Plan B. She had a normal period. The only reason she took a pregnancy test, Jasmine said, was because she had one lying around and, as a woman who’d been pregnant before, she felt a familiar shifting deep in her body.“Alex, imagine if I didn’t take that test. I would have never fucking known,” Jasmine said as they drove. “You would have never known. You would’ve missed your period this month,” Alex, 24, agreed. That kind of delay could have made the trip even more expensive. The cost of a surgical abortion, which is necessary past a certain point in pregnancy, starts at $700 at the Oklahoma clinic. The further into pregnancy the patient is, the more expensive an abortion can get.“That’s what pisses me off,” Jasmine continued. “I should be able to make that decision, not y'all. Y'all aren't the ones carrying the fucking thing. Y'all aren't the ones that are having to deal with my life and deal with what I got going on. I did what I needed to do.”As the car drove on, the tension eased. Jasmine kept singing along to the stereo, to rap songs, to Ella Mai and Kehlani, to a song by a Tejano singer about a man who wants to die for love. “This song is so not true, but it’s so sweet,” Jasmine told Alex, before translating it for him. “Este hombre se murió de amor. He’s saying, ‘This guy died of love. Please, let me go with you. Please take me with you.’”If Roe goes, fewer than half of U.S. states would have protections for abortion rights, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
But the purpose of the trip—and Jasmine’s fury over having to make it—never really faded. When Jasmine stopped to go to the bathroom, just past the border into Oklahoma, she brashly told a stranger what she was up to: “I'm getting an abortion and it's illegal in Texas, so we came out here.” (“Oh, OK,” they said. “Good luck with all that.”) Later on, Jasmine suddenly sighed, “Where am I at? I don't like it here. Take me back to Texas. Oh, I forgot. I can't.”Finally, at around 1 a.m. on Saturday morning, Jasmine’s car pulled into the parking lot of an Oklahoma City hotel. Alex and Jasmine were exhausted. Talk had dwindled. The once-bumping stereo was a low hum.The couple disappeared into the hotel’s bright lobby. They had, at most, seven hours before they had to wake up.No one really believed that Jasmine’s abortion would happen at 9 a.m. Instead, Jasmine was prepared to wait for as long as eight hours.She couldn’t walk in, take a pill, and walk out. Oklahoma has its own slate of abortion restrictions, including a requirement that all abortion patients must undergo counseling at least 72 hours ahead of undergoing the procedure. By state law, the counseling includes the warning, “Abortion shall terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”“I should be able to make that decision, not y'all. Y'all aren't the ones carrying the fucking thing. Y'all aren't the ones that are having to deal with my life and deal with what I got going on. I did what I needed to do.”
“The inundation of Texas patients overburdens abortion services in other states, many of which are already stretched to the breaking,” Pitman wrote in a 113-page ruling. “Underscoring the national scope of the harm, Kansas clinics are now struggling to cope with an influx of patients from Louisiana who, prior to the passage of SB 8 would have traveled to Texas for abortions, but now must find another, more hospitable state among the ever-dwindling number.”Pitman’s freeze didn’t last very long. Within two hours of his ruling, Texas moved to appeal it, and, by late Friday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had once again instituted the abortion ban.“I see a lot of women of color in here.”
Samantha, a 24-year-old in a pale pink bandana, was one of them. Like Jasmine, she’d driven in from the Dallas area the night before—but she’d brought along her mom, Pamela, who has undergone three abortions of her own. As the pair spoke about Texas, Pamela was by turns angry and teary, while Samantha grew more indignant.“Secretly, I think they're trying to shame us. They're trying to shame all women.”
“I just have to keep reminding myself that that is enough. Being here and doing what I'm doing is enough. And yet they're being forced to go through all of this just to get the care that they want and they need,” Bass told me. “So on the days that you feel really tired, because you're seeing people have to deal with things that are so unnecessary, that are completely medically unnecessary, it can get really hard.”Bass punctuated her speech to Jasmine with a staccato, “OK? OK.” Jasmine, calm and determined, quickly took up an answering rhythm: “OK. OK.” As the speech went on, they started to say it at the same time.Bass pulled out a small, white box.“This is the pill that ends the pregnancy, OK?” Bass told Jasmine. (“OK.”) “So most people don't have any symptoms with this pill, OK?” (“OK.”) “Occasionally, some spotting.” (“OK.”) “That means if you have to get anything done, you should do it today and tomorrow morning before you put the pills in your cheeks, OK?” (“OK.”) “Before I give you this pill, do you have any other questions for me?”“No,” Jasmine said. “It sounds pretty simple.”Jasmine held out her hand and Bass dropped the single white pill into it. Jasmine pinched her black mask back with her long, daffodil-colored fingernails, swallowed the pill, and took two gulps from a small cup of water.Jasmine’s abortion—the pill that she had traveled more than three hours for, that she had sacrificed upwards of $1,000 to get to—lasted only a few seconds.“On the days that you feel really tired, because you're seeing people have to deal with things that are so unnecessary, that are completely medically unnecessary, it can get really hard.”