Amy Hagstrom Miller knows - the Texas abortion provider who refuses to lie down and take

Amy angstrom Miller has defended its group health clinics Texas, Whole Woman, all the way to the Supreme Court despite tremendous personal cost. Here's why.

Amy Hagstrom Miller will face the Supreme Court today in defense of his group of abortion clinics, Comprehensive Health of Women. Hagstrom Miller is a small business owner mission-driven, inspired, he says, for his commitment to human rights and justice, the desire to be deeply present to women facing difficult decisions and shape their own future with the intention.

But in recent years, the goal of Hagstrom Miller to maintain a safe and supportive for "every woman" oasis has become almost impossible. For nearly a decade, she and her team have jumped through hoops like Texas legislator imposes more and more laws TRAP (selective restriction of abortion providers), false laws "security" aimed at clinics driving out of business and eliminate access to abortion. But after each establishment, costly, politicians from the religious right imposed a demand.

In 2013, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 2, which bans abortions after 20 weeks, severely restricts access to medication abortion, forcing doctors to seek admitting privileges at the hospital (otherwise unnecessary) and it requires that all abortion services takes place in a surgical center. Under the law, the staff is forced to walk a woman in an operating room before handing her two abortive pills and a glass of water.

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the law, Comprehensive Women's Health as the lead plaintiff. One way or another, the dispute will be over in the summer. What was life like in the years of endless legal battle? In the following interview Hagstrom Miller talks about the experience.

Valerie tartaric: You've spent most of a decade helpful and fighting regulations that have little to do with health and everything to do with putting you out of business women at the same time.

Amy Hagstrom Miller: One of the goals of the opposition is to make abortion seem more fear, complex and complicated than it really is. For the patient, it manifested in the language of health and safety, and physical plant built for surgery. The intention is to make an abortion procedure 5 to 10 minutes seems dangerous, and that's exactly what it does. Women who have heard this rhetoric come in and ask, Will I be able to have a child again? Are you going to cut? How knives used?

In addition to fear, women often say that they are the only one they know who has had an abortion. They say, I am a Catholic. I'm christian. I am a mother. And we let them know, "Most of our patients are Christians. Most are mothers now."

Tartaric: There used to be this way, back when it began providing abortion services. Tell us more about the changes.

Hagstrom Miller: In the 1990s antagonism to abortion focused on the outside of the clinic. It took the form of physical threats, invasions and doctors like shooting murder Brookline. Since that time opponents have moved into the clinic. They penetrated the walls using the regulatory and legal system as a way to attack women and providers.

Women are forced to look at an ultrasound, forced to listen to a script, forced to endure a waiting period. All this raises the idea that women are stupid, they have carried out a difficult decision without thinking about it. The regulatory attack on the provider makes it difficult to remain open, but also paints us as a place to care carelessness, as unsafe and in need of constant supervision rather than compassionate medical professionals we are. In the system of regulation of Texas, you are guilty until proven otherwise. So abortion foes make anonymous complaints about us and other providers, and they are put in the position of proof that are not true.

Not only that, we are in the position of having to explain and enforce the laws we do not agree. We were required to make brochures with information wrong fetal development and pay for the production of these materials. Abortion providers are evaluating the quota to produce this propaganda that the state is requiring us to disclose.

Tartaric: It sounds absurd.

Hagstrom Miller: Women see through it. Sixty-five percent of women who serve have one or more children. They have seen an ultrasound before and still force them to see the other as if they do not know what is growing within them. They know, and are committed: What do I have to do? how long I have to wait? I need an abortion, so I have to do to get one? It is almost an article of the onion. You have to climb wall? How long do I have to stand on your head? Just tell me what I have to do.

Tartaric: a decade ratchet on the right is taken, accumulating an absurd regulation of "security" on top of another. What to do for you? Hagstrom Miller: I have a rigorous search internally and philosophically not let us change this onslaught. My commitment is comprehensive care: one-on-one counseling; physical environment that are warm and comforting with wool blankets and walls and lavender herbal tea; and freedom to speak of spiritual or cultural concerns. I am committed to these aspects of care not to get killed. Let's fulfill what we have to meet the challenge and what we have to question. But the hearts and minds of women are at the center of what we are.

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