The Whole Women’s Health Organization, one of Texas’s biggest independent abortion providers, plans to relocate to a border city in New Mexico.
This move comes after the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of a 1925 Texas law which banned all abortions in the state with no exceptions and punished providers with possible imprisonment.
On Thursday, July 7, WWH closed its four clinics in Austin, Fort Worth, McAllen, and McKinney, Texas, and started to wind down operations.
The organization started a GoFundMe account for the public to support the move.
Doctors in the clinic will focus on providing 1st and 2nd-trimester abortions and continuing to provide virtual services for patients in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and more.
In the five days since going live, the WWH fund has reached over $150,000 of the $750,000 goal.
“WWH has served Texans for nearly 20 years, and our love for Texans runs deep. Even when the courts and the politicians have turned their backs on Texans, we never will,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, President, and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health and Whole Woman’s Health Alliance said.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, abortions in New Mexico are accessible and legally protected with no restrictions like mandatory waiting periods or parental involvement.
In February 2021, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill to protect a pregnant person’s right to an abortion.
But since Texas’ six-week abortion ban, New Mexico clinics have already seen an influx of Texas patients, with the majority of the patients they see coming from Texas, according to abortion providers at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Rights.
In an email exchange with the Signal, Jackie Dilworth, director of marketing and communications at WWH, wrote the organization is looking to relocate as soon as possible but is still in the process of finding an ideal city and purchasing a building.
Dilworth also wrote that WWH is looking to relocate to the southeastern region of New Mexico — as close to the Texas border as possible.
Nevertheless, according to Dilworth, WWH is still fighting Texas’s bad laws despite the Texas Supreme Court’s most recent ruling.
New Mexico and Louisiana are the only two border states that still offer and allow abortion services under current state laws.
On June 27, a Louisiana court blocked the state’s trigger law from taking effect, following Roe’s reversal, which was set to ban all abortions in Lousiana with no exceptions.
Depending on how the Lousiana court rules in a preliminary injunction hearing on July 8, Lousiana could enact an outright ban on abortions leaving New Mexico as the only southern option for Texas pregnant people.
Kennedy is a recent graduate of the University of St.Thomas in Houston where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Celt Independent. Kennedy brings her experience of writing about social justice issues to the Texas Signal where she serves as our Political Reporter. She does everything from covering crime beats, Texas politics, and community activism. Kennedy is a passionate reporter, avid reader, coffee enthusiast, and loves to travel.
