The Waiting Game

Faith is a nurse from San Antonio, Texas. She has a full life—a challenging job, a fiancé, two daughters, a house, a couple of dogs. She also has a seizure condition that makes pregnancy especially risky and requires her to be under the care of an obstetrician for three to six months before conception.

A few years ago she became pregnant despite being on birth control. At the time, doctors told her that she had a 40 percent chance of suffering a life-threatening grand mal seizure if she did not end the pregnancy. She could lose consciousness at any time, she says, “while I’m driving to work, or while I’m at home by myself.”

“I want my two daughters to have a mother,” she says of her decision to have an abortion. “I’m just not willing to take that risk.”

However, Texas law required Faith to not only have an ultrasound before being permitted to have the abortion, but then wait 24 hours to return to the clinic to have the procedure.

In tears, Faith describes this process as nothing short of torture.

“You are made to feel like a criminal,” she says. “To go home and just sit there and ponder on this. You’re being tortured for that whole 24 hours.”

Waiting periods have become an increasingly popular restriction among anti-choice proponents around the country, with a number of states now looking to expand the mandated period of delay to up to 72 hours.

In 2015 alone, 23 pieces of legislation to create or worsen existing waiting periods were introduced in 16 states.

“Waiting periods are part of a web specifically designed to ensnare women and undermine their ability to make non-coerced decisions about their reproductive health,” says Kelly Baden, director of state advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “At bottom, these kinds of restrictions are about not trusting women. There is of course no medical reason to require a waiting period before an abortion.”

Comments from waiting-period proponents offer a telling view of the presumptions underlying this trend in anti-choice legislation. “We owe women the time to control their fear and emotion and make an informed decision,” said one supporter of the North Carolina legislation—as though women are incapable of making thoughtful decisions about their health and lives without government-mandated delays.

Last year, a Missouri state legislator underscored the demeaning and offensive attitudes behind that state’s 72-hour law by comparing the procedure to buying a car: “Even when I buy a new vehicle . . . I don’t go right in there and say, I want to buy that vehicle, and, you know, leave with it.”

“In some cases,” Baden points out, “states have simply run out of abortion restrictions to enact so they’ve turned their attention to making existing restrictions even harsher. We always see trends in abortion restrictions, and as laws aiming to force clinics to shut down are tied up in the courts, lawmakers are back to targeting women’s decision-making.”

Due to the shame and stigma that such restrictions create around abortion care, Faith felt that she could not be straightforward with her employer or family about what she was doing.

“I didn’t want to be made to feel like a bad person any more than I already do—and you have to go through that just to get through the process,” she recalls.

In order to navigate the increasingly complex web of requirements—finding a provider in a state where anti-choice laws and funding cuts have shut down more than half of the state’s clinics, taking time off work to make two trips to the clinic, as well as recovering from the procedure—Faith, who is the only nurse at the private practice where she works, had to wait until she was 17 weeks pregnant to be able to take the full week off work she needed.

“If I take time off, the clinic where I work shuts down,” she says. “Finding the time—because of what a lengthy process it is—is very hard.”

Although this delay increased health risk and created a logistical challenge, Faith was fortunate to be able to receive the care she needed. For some women—particularly those with little or no income—mandatory delays and two-trip requirements can be even more dangerous. The burden of additional child care, lost wages (or lost jobs), transportation, and a possible overnight stay can quickly turn a waiting period into an absolute barrier to obtaining an abortion at all.

“These medically unnecessary bills make it clear that these are simply thinly veiled political attempts to get women to try to change their minds,” Baden notes.

Earlier this month, the Center for Reproductive Rights, together with the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Florida, filed a lawsuit in state court seeking to block a recently passed Florida measure forcing a woman to wait at least 24 hours and make at least one additional trip before she is able to receive safe, legal abortion care. The state is appealing the decision.