A doctor from Texas has shared how busy the last day was before the ban on abortion took effect.
The state’s new law, the Texas Heartbeat Act, known as SB8, prohibits terminations once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, which is around the six-week mark where many women are unaware they are actually pregnant.
The Texas Heartbeat Act is an act of the Texas Legislature. It was introduced as Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) and House Bill 1515 (HB 1515) on March 11, 2021, and was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on May 19, 2021. The law came into effect on September 1, 2021.
Before the law took effect at midnight on September 1, Jasbir Ahluwalia, 83, an obstetrician-gynecologist, worked through the night to complete the abortions at the Whole Woman’s Health clinic in Fort Worth.
Jasbir and his team performed 67 terminations, and he witnessed a drastic shift just 24 hours later.
Dr Jasbir is one of the many Texans to stand up to the GOP, helping many women get safe terminations while it was still legal to do so.
The clinic only had “eight people total between the techs and the front office staff, the doctor and three staff members from a nearby clinic they brought in to help.”
The clinic reportedly “needed to perform eight abortions an hour with only one doctor on duty, an octogenarian who had been working since 7 am.”
“Nobody cared for their own welfare,” Dr Jabir said in an interview with Vice. “The workers – they want to take care of the patients. That was an amazing, amazing attitude I saw for the first time in all these 50 years of practice of medicine.”
“We were joking, there was plenty of food in the break room – nobody would go,” he said. “They wanted to take care of every patient, bring them in, move and move and move. I saw tremendous, tremendous teamwork that night.”
“This was like, we’re going to fight a war,” the doctor continued. “This is a war against the politicians, and we’re going to fight and win.”
“We’re not going to turn around anybody,” he added. “And it went on by the book. We did not take any shortcuts. Everything was done properly. I was really amazed.”
The clinic staff hustled to see those patients, completing 67 in-office procedures and upward of 50 follow-up appointments for medication abortions. The last procedure was done at 11:56 PM.
Since then, Dr Jabir has had to turn down a number of patients who are just over six weeks and is seeing significantly fewer people as a reported 85 percent of abortions in Texas happen after six weeks.
“You couldn’t imagine the difference between night and day,” he told Vice. “And there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a law, it’s in effect, we have to observe it.”
The team at Dr Jabir’s clinic could only accept a fraction of patients the next day.
“There’s nobody in the clinic,” he said. “It’s like an empty clinic”.
The doctor called it a “sad, hollow feeling.”
“Basically, I’m still a surgeon and I cannot do surgeries,” he said. “Wow. Is that so? Who decided that? Not the medical board. Not the doctors. But some crazy politicians.”
The doctor also slammed those supporting the abortion ban, calling them the “Taliban of Texas.” The doctor still has his clinic open, but now has to reject 40-60% of those who come.
“A 15, 16-year-old is now forced to carry a pregnancy to term, and they don’t have any resources to go out of state?” he said. “That’s sad. That is absolutely sad.”
“To me, that looks like the state is committing child abuse.”
Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who joined the pro-life cause, told Fox News that her former Texas clinic aimed to perform abortions within 5-7 minutes. She added that her clinic would see about 50 abortions within eight hours.
At a Planned Parenthood clinic in Oklahoma City, more than 60% of the 219 appointments over the next two weeks are for women from Texas. Doctors say recent patients from Texas have included rape victims, as SB8 makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
On September 3, even the Satanic Temple in Salem, Massachusetts weighed in and called the law (SB 8) as “cynically designed”. Numerous firms like Match Group, Uber, and Lyft have also weighed in, with support for those affected by the ban.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice sought an emergency order Tuesday night to block the Texas law and argued in a filing, submitted in a district court in Austin, that it was enacted “to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights.”
In addition, the law allows people to take legal action against doctors and anyone else who assist the abortion process. This can be anything from friends or family members who drive a woman to an appointment past the time the heartbeat can be detected. Successful lawsuits can pay out $10,000 to the citizen who reported the incident.