Access Restricted: Abortion in Texas
Fault Lines travels to Texas to investigate why some women are taking abortion into their own hands.
Texas has passed some of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the US.
By September 2014, only six abortion clinics are expected to remain in a state that has 70,000 abortions per year.
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Fault Lines travels to Texas to find out what is behind the legislation and how it is affecting women’s lives.
In this episode we meet a 23-year old woman named Melissa, who self-induces an abortion because she lives in an area of Texas that no longer has any abortion clinics.
She says it is a financial burden to travel 480 kilometres (300 miles) round-trip to reach the closest abortion clinic. Instead, Melissa travelled 30 minutes to Mexico, where she bought a medication called Misoprostol. It is normally used to treat ulcers, but she took it to end her pregnancy.
Fault Lines retraces Melissa’s steps to Mexico, to find out how a woman in her position could acquire Misoprostol without a prescription, and speaks with advocates on both side of the debate over access to abortions in Texas.