"There apparently has been... a little bit of an epidemic on this," said a sheriff's official for Houston's surrounding county, where the body of an infant was found in a roadside ditch this summer, as quoted by WaPo. The morbid discovery was made by a landscaping crew.
"All of these intersectional things could be leading to this," Blake Rocap, a lawyer with the Sissy Farenthold Reproductive Justice Defense Project, told WaPo. The issue is exacerbated by the state's "abysmal" access to prenatal care, he added, "particularly for people without private insurance, particularly for people without immigration status."
The Texas ban, which went into effect in 2021, is considered the most draconian in the nation. It makes no exceptions even in cases of rape or incest, leaving women with no legal means of stopping unwanted pregnancies.
According to independent research from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, the percentage of women without access to healthcare is the highest in the country, per WaPo. The already desperate circumstances are even worse for pregnant undocumented immigrants, who may avoid going to a clinic to seek care for fear of being deported.
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