Why the C.E.O. Behind Match.com and Tinder Took a Stand on the Texas Abortion Law?
In 2013, when Texas passed Senate Bill 7, the law made abortion illegal in the state, and it forced clinics that performed abortions to close. But the law did leave another option, for people who could not afford them and who were not willing to travel from across the country to have an abortion in Texas.
But instead of giving people who could not afford or were not willing to take the time to get an abortion an alternative, Texas lawmakers took a step that would have made it harder for them to access that alternative.
That step would have been to make abortion illegal in Texas, and make it impossible for Texas clinics performing abortions to do so.
That would have been bad—an obviously bad thing. It would have been a bad thing, though, if the lawmakers behind the law only thought of it for the people who actually would have had abortions, but not for the women whose lives would be affected at the same time. That would have been even worse. The people who actually would have had abortions would have been completely unaware that their lives were at risk.
Which is why the most recent version of SB 7, the one proposed by the Texas legislature at the beginning of the year, makes it even easier for women to get an abortion, by requiring them to have a doctor perform the procedure. The way the bill is written, it is a lot harder for a woman to get an abortion, and that is the women who will be most affected by the change.
The bill does not require abortion clinics to be licensed. It does not require them to be accredited, and by its very nature it means they will not be. That means that abortion clinics will not be federally funded—instead, they will have to rely on Medicaid and private insurance for their services. There is already a small network of clinics in Texas that has the license and the accreditation to perform abortions in the state, but their locations cannot provide abortions to women who live more than a two-hour drive away from the clinic.
The clinics that do perform abortions in Texas, particularly in rural areas where the population is lower and the cost of living is higher, will see their services reduced even more.
And those clinics cannot provide the abortion care that is their primary business. In the state that already has the most restrictive abortion laws in the US, there is no way that they can provide safe,
