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"  March for Life anti-abortion rally in Texas, January 2014. Women who need an abortion in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas are being forced to do it themselves. This is happening today, 41 years after the Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade and guaranteed women a constitutional right to abortion. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve seen women inserting things in to their vagina, trying to dilate their cervix. We&amp;#039;ve seen people ask their partners to beat them. They&amp;#039;re douching with Coke or with Lysol \u2014 the same stories we heard pre-Roe,&amp;quot; Amy Hagstrom Miller told The Rachel Maddow Show. Miller owns and operates Whole Woman&amp;#039;s Health, the only abortion provider in the region, which covers a population of 1.3 million people. Miller&amp;#039;s clinics have been unable to provide medical abortion since 2013, when the Texas legislature passed a bill, which \u2014 among other harsh restrictions \u2014 requires any physician performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Since Whole Health&amp;#039;s doctors have repeatedly been refused privileges, the only services they can provide are emergency care for women who either try to self-induce an abortion or have just returned from Mexico \u2014 a stone&amp;#039;s throw away \u2014 sick with symptoms from black-market drugs or an abortion they received there. Now women in the area will not even have these services. Women&amp;#039;s Whole Health can no longer afford to operate its centers in McAllen and Beaumont, in East Texas, and they have closed these two locations. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s heartbreaking,&amp;quot; Miller says. &amp;quot;We didn&amp;#039;t change the amount of women in the community who need [an abortion]. We just blocked their access to getting it safely. It&amp;#039;s obvious we&amp;#039;re going to have a public health problem on our hands.&amp;quot;\u00A0 Dr. Lester Minto, who owned and operated Reproductive Services of Harlingen, the only other abortion clinic in the Rio Grande Valley, closed his clinic last week after 30 years. The closest clinics still in operation are in San Antonio and Corpus Christi, both cities that\u00A0are several hours away. Texas has been slowing filling its law books with anti-abortion laws since 2003, a year after the Republicans seized control of the state legislature. Since 2011, the Women&amp;#039;s Right to Know Act has required women to wait 24 hours after initial consultation with a doctor before an abortion can be provided. They must also get a sonogram. Written in the law, doctors are required to show the sonogram to women and make the heartbeat audible. Abortions performed after 20 weeks have been illegal since 2005. Though this law has been repealed many times, it continues to be reinstated. And in 2013, the Texas legislature passed some of the more restrictive abortion measure\u00A0in the country, which included the provision for admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of an abortion clinic. In 2011, there were 44 abortion clinics in Texas \u2014 a state with a population of 26 million. Today, after the closure of the last three in the Rio Grande Valley, it&amp;#039;s down to 24, according to the Texas Tribune. In a press conference announcing the closure of her clinics, Miller said, &amp;quot;For women and families of Texas, justice has not been served.&amp;quot;\u00A0 Related:\u00A0 Alabama Republicans Approve Some of the Toughest Abortion Restrictions in the Country 6 Women on Their Terrifying, Infuriating Experiences Outside Abortion Clinics Follow Heather on Twitter. Photo credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a21644/whole-womens-health-abortion-clinics-texas/>