MCKINNEY, Texas — Whole Woman’s Health said they were expecting the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade to come down Monday.
Instead, the landmark case was overturned last Friday.
So, appointments for abortion services scheduled for Saturday and Sunday at their McKinney and Fort Worth locations had to be canceled.
“We planned to see patients up until the very last day, possibly, of what would be services, and so we had patients scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday in our clinics had to be called and those appointments canceled for them,” Marva Sadler, Whole Woman’s Health Senior Director of Clinical Services, said.
The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade came around 9 a.m. Friday. So, there were a few abortions that were performed at Whole Woman’s Health clinics before the ruling came down, Silva said.
“If you were not in the operating room in the middle of a procedure or if you did not have a [Mifepristone] in your hand going down your throat, you were not able to be seen after that time,” Sadler said.
As of Friday, Whole Woman’s Health paused all abortion services in Texas.
“The fact that it happened and it happened so quickly and that we had to cease operations so swiftly was absolutely a surprise for almost all of our patients,” Sadler said.
Representatives with Planned Parenthood told WFAA it was a similar situation at their North Texas locations.
“They had been prepared to manage difficult, really difficult conversations with patients, including patients who were actually in the health center on Friday morning waiting to get their abortion procedure, and unfortunately had to be turned away on Friday while they were actually in the health center,” Planned Parenthood Texas Votes Executive Director Dyana Limon-Mercado said.
While Friday’s Supreme Court ruling did result in emotional conversations with patients over the past few days, North Texas physicians point out that the state’s Heartbeat Bill or SB8 has been in effect for a while.
Whole Woman's Health was among several Texas abortion providers that filed a lawsuit challenging the state's pre-Roe v. Wade abortion ban which criminalized both performing abortions and assisting anyone who performs abortions.
