AUSTIN, Texas — At least 74 mothers have responded to an offer from a chain of abortion facilities in Texas, which announced that it would provide free abortions to those affected by Hurricane Harvey during the month of September to “help” pregnant mothers who wanted to terminate their pregnancy but could not do so because of the storm.
According to reports, Whole Woman’s Health, which has locations in Austin, Fort Worth, San Antonio and McAllen, has also raised $15,000 through the Lilith Fund to pay for the travel of mothers who will be coming from long distances to kill their children.
“Texas doesn’t have a safety net, so we have to help people raise money for services,” president Amy Hagstrom Miller told the Dallas Morning News. “Many of these women are traveling for two days and need support for travel and child care.”
Miller’s organization had posted its free abortion offer to its website earlier this month following the hurricane.
“To ensure our patients get the compassionate, quality abortion care they deserve, we’re providing no-cost abortions for those affected by Hurricane Harvey,” the organization wrote.
“There are already so many barriers to access this necessary procedure, and natural disasters stand in the way of women getting to their appointment and/or being able to afford care,” it stated.
“During Hurricane Harvey, many of the clinics in Houston had to close temporarily, leaving women with very few options. Continued political attacks on abortion access make an unwanted pregnancy particularly stressful in Texas—add that to the stress of dealing with hurricane aftermath.”
However, Melissa Conway of Texas Right to Life said in a statement that there is no such thing as an abortion without cost or consequence.
“There is always a cost to abortion,” she said. “Women are not free from the emotional toll that ensues after abortion, and the child is certainly not free to live another day. Abortions, just like the catastrophic effects of a hurricane, are never free and we, as a community, pay the price for their needless destruction.”
The group also noted in a blog post that that adding to the death toll is not the answer following Hurricane Harvey.
“At a time when our neighbors need our united and unwavering support, we as pro-lifers must rise to the challenge. We are called to show the world that we can love the mother and the preborn child and that we will help them both,” it wrote.
“Harvey has left far too great a death toll and wake of devastation. We must stand for life. Anti-life groups like the Lilith Fund are using the storm and the ensuing crisis as yet one more reason to abort vulnerable pre-born lives. Women facing difficulties and obstacles must know that they are not alone.”
As previously reported, Whole Woman’s Health of Austin was fined $17,430 in 2011 for mislabeling boxes containing the remains of aborted babies, which were then collected by the medical waste company Stericycle and autoclaved before being dumped in a municipal solid waste landfill with household and commercial trash.
Stericycle was fined $42,000 for its part in the matter as it is illegal in Texas to dump human remains in landfills. Local company representatives said that the aborted babies should have rather been shipped to Stericycle’s incineration plant in Apopka, Florida, where they would be burned with other pathological waste.
“It was explained that medical waste is placed in red biohazard bags, then placed into boxes provided by Stericycle. Each fetus resulting from an abortion is placed into a hard plastic container and then into a red biohazard bag. The bag is then placed into a freezer, where it is stored,” an investigative report from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) outlined.
“When Stericycle arrives to transport the medical waste, the individual fetuses are removed from the freezer and placed into another large red biohazard bag. The red biohazard bag containing the fetuses is placed into the medical waste box along with other medical waste generated at the facility that requires treatment,” it explained.
Last year, Whole Woman’s Health was among those that filed a lawsuit against the Texas Department of State Health Services after it finalized a rule at the request of Gov. Greg Abbott that required abortionists to utilize burial or cremation services provided by funeral homes rather than hiring medical waste companies to dispose of the children with other medical trash.