The drive between Del Rio and San Antonio consists of vast expanses of Texas farmland dotted with tiny towns. Along the route, a huge wooden sign in Hondo greets passers-by: “Welcome: This is God’s Country. Please don’t drive through it like hell.” By the time Kristen passed the sign on her way to get an abortion, she had been riding a Greyhound bus for four hours. The 150-mile trip was the shortest distance she could travel to visit an open clinic — Whole Woman’s Health in San Antonio.

Her journey is not unique in Texas.

In 2013, Texas enacted House Bill 2, a sweeping set of regulations that abortion providers criticized as overly restrictive and unconstitutional. Whole Woman’s Health sued the state, and the case went to the Supreme Court, which in June 2016, sided with clinic and overturned two key provisions of the law. But during the time the law was in effect, more than half of the state’s abortion clinics closed, and women’s access to abortion declined dramatically.

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Today, the fight over access in South Texas continues, with the effects of H.B. 2 not just visible in closed clinics. They are also seen in the lives of women fighting for what they feel is right. I photographed these women as part of a long-term project for the San Antonio Express-News. In early 2016, my editor, Luis Rios, and I began thinking about how we could cover abortion in South Texas in a deeper way. We knew that regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court case, which was still pending at the time, the landscape of abortion access had changed dramatically.

We thought it was important to spend time with women on both sides of the debate in communities affected by these changes. Listening to them and not dismissing their experiences — particularly if they did not fit into the traditional pro-choice or pro-life positions — was crucial.

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Mercedes Soto had been gang raped and had tried several times to induce an abortion before an anti-abortion sidewalk counselor persuaded her to continue the pregnancy. “My heart burns with fire,” she said. “I fought for my son’s life and he saved my soul.”

Lucy Felix teaches women in the colonias, unincorporated rural enclaves along the border, about reproductive health care, immigration and other issues affecting them. She said much of her philosophy about reproductive health care reflects her belief that when women think of themselves as strong, they bring everyone up with them.

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Jess twice went to Mexico to obtain illegal abortion pills that ultimately did not work. Her mother drove her more than 300 miles for an abortion after self-induction had failed. She said she was out of work for two weeks after the procedure.

Yet so much of the abortion debate excludes these women and more often involves heated rhetoric between politicians and activists in capitols and courts. This project’s aim was to explore women’s motivations and the larger cultural considerations that affect their decisions and beliefs about abortion. By documenting their journeys, both physical and emotional, my hope was to illuminate the easily-overlooked humanity behind both sides of a topic that continues to provoke intense and impassioned debate on the American political landscape.



Carolyn Van Houten is a photojournalist who has spent the past two years on staff at The San Antonio Express-News focusing on long-term projects in South Texas. Starting in September, she will be joining the staff of The Washington Post.



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