IT HAS BEGUN: Back-Alley Abortions In Texas As Women Look To Mexico

REGARDLESS OF WHERE ONE STANDS ON the religious morality issues surrounding abortion, the purpose of public policy regarding women's reproductive rights is to make this legal procedure, per the U.S. Supreme Court seminal Roe v.Wade decision, safe, available and rare. Instead, over the past couple of years, the rise of the Religious Right, Tea Party, and radicalization of the Republican Party bending to its extremist right wing fringe, there has been a relentless Republican assault on women's health, particularly reproductive health, in Red States like Virginia (angry women there kicked 'Gov. Vaginal Probe' from ticket consideration), Mississippi (in which the governor boasted of closing down its last abortion clinic), and Texas, which has slashed funding for Planned Parenthood, whose abortion services are only 3% of their overall women's healthcare.

Now we are seeing the first logical consequences of this brutal, retrograde, anti-woman social policy: A return, for all intents and purposes, to back-alley abortions as mostly poor Texan women with few alternatives turn to unsafe, unregulated Mexican clinics and pharmacies for services no longer provided by the state of Texas.

The women of America had better wake up to the reality of this radical right wing Republican Party and the extent to which its policies are endangering women's lives and health in very REAL ways. And they'd better realize that voting straight party (D), from top to bottom, is the ONLY rational alternative in this election cycle.

Abortion-rights advocates are concerned that a lack of awareness about clinical options in the United States — as well as a lack of funds — could lead more women to go underground and risk their health in this way. In 2011, Texas lawmakers made deep cuts in financing for family planning for low-income women. And a new law that requires a woman seeking an abortion to receive a sonogram 24 hours ahead of the procedure — that is, to make at least two visits to the abortion clinic — may be prompting some to seek alternate abortion methods.