Among the devastating wreckage from Hurricane Harvey are the remains of health clinics in Houston that provided abortions. It's already difficult to obtain a legal abortion in Texas, due to strict restrictions on reproductive rights, and now pregnant people in the Houston area face greater difficulty after missing their appointments or being unable to make an appointment due to the storm.
Enter: Whole Woman's Health, an abortion provider in the state that sees the devastating choices Harvey would cause some pregnant people to make and is stepping in to help. The organization, which has four health clinics in Texas — in Austin, San Antonio, McAllen, and Fort Worth — is offering Hurricane Harvey survivors free abortions during September, Tonic reports.
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Not only that, but Whole Woman's Health is also offering to cover travel and lodging costs for anyone who needs them to get to one of the clinics for an appointment. Because, as they wrote in their blog, "The need for abortion care does not stop for natural disasters."
"Continued political attacks on abortion access make an unwanted pregnancy particularly stressful in Texas — add that to the stress of dealing with hurricane aftermath. We can only imagine what a stressful time this must be for those patients who had to miss their appointments or are waiting for the nearest clinic to open," Whole Woman's Health wrote on their blog.
The cost of these abortions will be partially covered by Texas' Lilith Fund, a privately funded organization that aims to offset abortion costs for people in Texas. If you're looking to help, the Lilith Fund has set up a donation page for Hurricane Harvey survivors that will be used to help Whole Woman's Health cover the cost of abortion, travel, and lodging.
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