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" A little less than a year ago, Wendy Davis rallied pro-choicers nationwide with her pink-sneakered filibuster of a bill in Texas that would have restricted abortion to 20 weeks, required abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges to nearby hospitals and required that abortion clinics meet the same standards as hospital surgical centers. Supporters stayed up all night cheering her on, and those who couldn&amp;#039;t be in Austin joined in online. Though the bill eventually passed after Gov. Rick Perry added the bill as part of a second special session, Davis got the country fired up about abortion rights. Today, sadly, that is no longer the case. Davis is running for Texas governor, but the Republican pro-life platform is in full effect in her state and across the country. And Democrats are remarkably quiet. The last abortion clinic in the Rio Grande Valley closed earlier this month, leaving women in one of the poorest areas of the U.S. with no local option for pregnancy termination. Despite the impending health crises created by those closures, along with the shuttering of dozens of other family planning clinics, there was little noise out of Washington. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s been outrage from people who serve underserved populations in Texas, the healthcare people, the human rights organizations, and some of the abortion fund activists who try to help people who don&amp;#039;t have insurance,&amp;quot; says Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Women&amp;#039;s Health, a group of women&amp;#039;s clinics including the one that closed in the Valley and one that closed in Beaumont in East Texas. &amp;quot;But the political sphere has been nearly silent.&amp;quot; While the GOP doesn&amp;#039;t shy away from talking about abortion, Democrats seem wary about even using the A-word, focusing instead on women&amp;#039;s health in general. In fairness to them, some of that discussion reflects reality: When organizations like Planned Parenthood lose their funding, they aren&amp;#039;t losing funding for abortion, since federal funding hasn&amp;#039;t been permitted to go to abortion since the 1970s. Rather, they&amp;#039;re losing funding for services like well-woman visits, pap smears, STD testing and treatment, sexual health education, contraception and cancer screenings. And the right-wing attacks on reproductive health have not just been on abortion \u2014 they&amp;#039;ve targeted a range of health services. But they&amp;#039;ve primarily targeted abortion, and few politicians seem willing to call them out on it \u2014 despite the fact that abortion is a normal part of the reproductive lives of women. One in three women in the U.S. will terminate a pregnancy, but the stigma attached to it is striking. While it&amp;#039;s hardly taboo to say you&amp;#039;re on the pill, it&amp;#039;s still a relative oddity to hear a woman talk openly about her abortion. &amp;quot;The Democrats have this block where they think if they stay away from the abortion issue they&amp;#039;re going to win by pretending that the issue doesn&amp;#039;t matter and not saying the A-word,&amp;quot; Hagstrom Miller says. &amp;quot;The issue is that women lost access to a legal service of abortion care. And while it&amp;#039;s a larger health care issue, access to abortion for poor rural women primarily Latina and African American is a political football.&amp;quot; All women suffer when lawmakers restrict their freedom to decide when to have children, but already vulnerable women suffer the most. Paying for abortion out of pocket, which is the only option for many low-income women who live in abortion-hostile states, can run into the thousands of dollars, depending on which procedure is done and how far along into a pregnancy it&amp;#039;s performed. For women in the almost 90 percent of U.S. counties that lack an abortion provider, terminating a pregnancy often means substantial travel \u2014 sometimes across state lines. That requires taking time off work, which is often difficult for low-wage hourly workers, and coming up with money for transportation. It requires coordinating childcare \u2014 most women who terminate pregnancies already have at least one child. And if a woman lives in one of the more than two dozen states with waiting periods, she might have to go all the way to the clinic only to be told to come back in 24 or 48 hours. If it takes her too long to save enough money and make all the necessary arrangements, she may be looking at a procedure after 12 weeks of pregnancy \u2014 which fewer clinics perform, meaning she may have to travel even further to see a doctor who will terminate a second-trimester pregnancy.  The growing barriers for a woman to get an abortion aren&amp;#039;t limited to Texas. Though the views of pro-choicers and pro-lifers don&amp;#039;t often overlap, one point we all agree on is the effectiveness of the conservative strategy of slowly chipping away at abortion rights. While the big anti-choice coup would be overturning Roe v. Wade, that&amp;#039;s unlikely in the immediate term, and so groups opposed to reproductive freedoms are pushing through regulations that don&amp;#039;t outlaw abortion but make it functionally inaccessible. Since 2010, state-level abortion restrictions have skyrocketed. More than 200 were introduced across 30 states in just three years. Today, more than half of all American women live in states that have more than four types of major restrictions on abortion. Nine states ban abortion 20 weeks after fertilization, despite those laws clearly flouting the abortion rights framework set up by Roe v. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court cases that allow elective abortion until the point of fetal viability. Alabama, Arkansas and North Dakota tried to take it even further, banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat was detected (the Arkansas and North Dakota laws were struck down in federal court). In nine states, no insurance \u2014 even private plans \u2014 are permitted to cover abortion. Fifteen more ban abortion coverage in state health care exchanges, meaning that women in 24 states cannot get abortion services on an exchange-based health plan. Twenty-six states have waiting periods where a woman is required to go home and think about her choice before she can terminate a pregnancy; ten of those states require her to go to the clinic at least twice. Three clinics have shut down in Ohio since the start of last year, and the final clinic in Toledo faces closure. Women are going to Michigan for the procedure, though that state, too, has seen the number of clinics reduced. And laws requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals in order to provide an abortion at a nearby clinic are advancing in Louisiana and South Carolina. A similar admitting-privileges requirement was one of the main forces behind the closures of the Texas clinics this month, as doctors saw their applications denied. This combined with other regulations and budget cuts passed by the Texas legislature has taken the number of clinics in the state of Texas from 44 in 2011 to 24 today. In the fall, clinics will be required to meet surgical-center standards, meaning that all procedures \u2014 even non-surgical abortions \u2014 will have to take place in an operating room, despite the fact that both the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association oppose the standards as unnecessary. Once that happens, the number of clinics in Texas will go down to just six, in a state of more than 13 million women, with the largest rural population in the country. For women in the Rio Grande Valley, the nearest clinic will be in San Antonio, about 240 miles away. Lack of abortion access means some women die, and many more are gravely injured. &amp;quot;Abortion didn&amp;#039;t just sort of happen after Roe v. Wade,&amp;quot; Hagstrom Miller says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not like abortion was a new thing \u2014 safe abortion was a new thing. If a woman can&amp;#039;t bring a child into the world for whatever reason, she can&amp;#039;t. Restrictions don&amp;#039;t change the fact that she isn&amp;#039;t ready to have another child.&amp;quot; Paula Saldana, a Rio Grande Valley-based community volunteer who lost her job at Planned Parenthood due to budget cuts, echoes this sentiment. &amp;quot;When women find themselves in difficult situations, they do what they need to do,&amp;quot; she told Cosmopolitan. &amp;quot;Some women even travel to Mexico for birth control, pap smears, mammograms, and even abortion pills.&amp;quot; Politicians who call themselves pro-choice should be outraged at what&amp;#039;s happening. After Davis&amp;#039; filibuster, Nancy Pelosi blasted the controversial Texas law, saying, &amp;quot;What is at risk is the discretion of a woman to make judgments about the size and time, timing of her family.&amp;quot; And 31 U.S. senators sent Davis a thank-you note: &amp;quot;Thank you for your courage and determination in defeating S.B. 5, a bill that would have severely limited women&amp;#039;s reproductive choices in Texas \u2026 Thanks to your dedication, Texas and the rest of the country will rethink efforts to enact similar laws.&amp;quot; Where are these voices now? This may be an issue that&amp;#039;s legislated at the state level, but when it&amp;#039;s affecting so many women across so many states, it needs to be a national conversation. Why aren&amp;#039;t pro-choice politicians railing against the restrictions and calling attention to all the women who are hurt by them? In April 2013, Obama made a speech at the annual Planned Parenthood conference and vowed to fight the encroachment on women&amp;#039;s reproductive freedom. &amp;quot;The fact is, after decades of progress, there&amp;#039;s still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;And they&amp;#039;ve been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women&amp;#039;s health.&amp;quot; He added that we&amp;#039;ve &amp;quot;got a president who&amp;#039;s going to be right there with you, fighting every step of the way.&amp;quot; Now would be a good time for him \u2014 and for all pro-choice politicians \u2014 to renew that fight and start calling attention to just how terrible things have gotten.  RELATED:  These Women Want to Change the Way You Think About Abortion It Just Got Much Harder for Women in Texas to Get an Abortion 6 Women on Their Terrifying, Infuriating Encounters With Abortion Clinic Protesters Learn Exactly How the Abortion Pill Works...and If It&amp;#039;s Safe Follow Jill on Twitter. Photo credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a6089/politicians-fighting-abortion-restrictions/>