A 25 year old woman in couldn’t get an abortion in Arkansas until she was 21 weeks pregnant. Soon, that could be illegal.
Sarah Roberts, left, an abortion doula, relaxes as A., partially seen at right, recovers from an abortion.
A., who asked her name not be used as she hadn’t told any of her friends or family she was pregnant, had been trying to get an abortion since she was 6 weeks pregnant. She didn’t have the money herself, and even if she did, there is an ever-dwindling number of abortion clinics in the South. She turned to the man who’d gotten her pregnant, who at first offered to pay for the abortion, but, based on texts reviewed by BuzzFeed News and interviews with A., later reneged.
“Since March 8, I’ve been trying to get here every weekend,” she said. “I’m still not convinced it’s gonna happen, something else will go wrong and I will have to have this baby.” At first the man was comforting and helpful. He would bring her groceries and walk her dog. When she was 6 weeks pregnant, he drove her to her first appointment at Little Rock Family Planning Services, where the clinic workers confirmed the pregnancy, told her her options, read the state-mandated script about the risks of abortion and of continuing the pregnancy, and made a follow-up appointment after the mandatory 48-hour waiting period.
“I’m very against guns and everyone here is very Southern and always makes fun of me for it — they love them, they want to shoot them all the time,” A. told BuzzFeed News. “So my friend knew something was up when I told her that I wanted to get a gun to protect myself.”He made it clear to her that if she had the baby, he would force himself into her life, and said to her that he believed had more rights to the child than she did.
When she started desperately trying to take care of the abortion herself, all the barriers that make it hard for women in the South became crystal clear to her. Abortion clinics closer than the one in Little Rock either didn’t return her calls or don’t sedate women during the abortion procedure. She was already obligated to pay $250 to the Little Rock clinic for the first consultation, mandated by state law, and didn’t want to have to do that somewhere else.
Roberts’s partner drove two of her daughters who work as abortion doulas for the fund from Jackson to pick A. up and take her to Little Rock to finally get the abortion. But when she got there, it turned out the clinic had gotten the date of her last period wrong: She wasn’t 18 weeks from her last period, she was 20 weeks from her last period, which required a more elaborate, two-day procedure. She had to return the following week, but if she missed that appointment, that was it.
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