For many years, the Pregnancy Control Clinic, tucked inside a squat, beige constructing across the nook from a bowling alley, dealt with many of the abortions on Guam, a tiny U.S. territory 1,600 miles south of Japan.
But the physician who ran it retired seven years in the past, and the clinic now seems deserted. An outdated medical examination desk stands close to an arrogance with a dislodged faucet, and a letter from Dr. Edmund A. Griley is taped to the entrance door: “My last day of seeing patients is November 18, 2016,” he wrote. “I recommend that you begin looking for a new physician as soon as possible.”
Dr. Griley has since died, and his abandoned clinic is a dusty snapshot of Guam’s previous — and a few say, its future.
Though abortion is authorized in Guam as much as 13 weeks of being pregnant, and later in sure instances, the final physician who carried out abortions left Guam in 2018. The closest abortion clinic on American soil is in Hawaii, an eight-hour flight away. And a pending court docket case might quickly lower off entry to abortion capsules, the final manner for most girls on Guam to get authorized abortions.
As anti-abortion activists across the nation capitalize on momentum from the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Guam, a speck of land within the Pacific, stands out.
Forces on either side of the abortion debate say that the island of 154,000 folks is on observe to turn into the purest instance of what life can be like underneath a near-total ban. More than a dozen states have banned most abortions, forcing girls there who search to terminate pregnancies to journey elsewhere, typically at nice value and danger to their well being. But none is as remoted as Guam.
“Guam is a litmus test,” mentioned the territory’s legal professional common, Douglas Moylan, a Republican who opposes abortion. “If anti-abortion forces were to succeed anywhere in the United States, I would say Guam would be one of them.”
There are two docs who’re licensed in Guam and prepared to offer abortions, and each are primarily based in Hawaii, the place they’ll see sufferers by way of video calls and prescribe abortion capsules. That might change if the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstates a territorial regulation that may require girls to see a health care provider in particular person in an effort to get hold of capsules.
A streak of anti-abortion sentiment runs by way of Guam, and there are different makes an attempt to additional prohibit the process. Mr. Moylan, the legal professional common, is combating in federal court docket to attempt to revive a 1990 regulation that banned almost all abortions however was blocked by a federal choose. In the meantime, the legislature handed a invoice final yr that may prohibit most abortions after six weeks of being pregnant. It was vetoed by Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero, a Democrat, a nurse and the island’s first feminine governor.
She recalled that as a scholar in California earlier than the Roe v. Wade determination, she cared for ladies who had been “hemorrhaging because either they self-aborted or they went to underground abortion clinics and they didn’t do it right.”
As the top of the Guam Nurses Association, Ms. Leon Guerrero testified in opposition to the 1990 ban, which might have made it a criminal offense to carry out, endure or search an abortion, besides in some medical emergencies, or to encourage girls to have abortions. A federal court docket dominated that the regulation was unconstitutional and blocked the territorial authorities from implementing it, however it stays on the books.
“Everything that’s going around impacts Guam, and our women here, because we’re much more isolated in terms of access to health care,” the governor mentioned.
Where America’s Day Begins
Guam is up to now to the west of the continental United States that its clocks are 15 hours forward of Eastern Standard Time, in the identical time zone as Vladivostok, Russia, and the east coast of Australia. The island promotes itself as “where America’s day begins.”
But although they’re American residents, residents of Guam, who principally determine ethnically both as Chamorro, the Indigenous folks of the Mariana Islands, or as Filipino, can’t vote for president or ship voting representatives to Congress.
About one-third of the island is managed by the Department of Defense, whose footprint is increasing. Though abortions usually are not out there on the island’s navy bases besides in emergencies, the Pentagon can pay for abortion-related journey for troops serving in locations the place the process is illegitimate.
Abortion has lengthy been a taboo subject in Pacific island communities; about 80 % of Guam’s inhabitants are Catholic, reflecting the island’s Spanish colonial previous.
Dr. William Freeman, the final physician who carried out abortions on Guam, left the island in 2018. Dr. Freeman, who’s now 78 and dwelling in Manila, mentioned that when he first arrived on Guam 39 years in the past, the seven docs who carried out abortions typically obtained “phone calls threatening to kill us or blow us up.”
When he retired, a associate who opposed abortion declined to proceed that a part of their apply. Dr. Freeman steered having docs go to Guam for six-week stints to offer the process, however “no group was willing to make their clinic available,” he mentioned.
‘Hope Is Rising’
The Guam regulation that requires girls searching for an abortion to obtain government-mandated data from a health care provider — and solely in particular person — has been blocked by a court docket order whereas a authorized problem proceeds. The two Hawaii-based docs argue of their lawsuit that if the injunction is lifted, it could turn into virtually not possible for them to help girls on Guam by way of telemedicine.
That can be a victory, so far as the island’s Catholic officers are involved. In an interview on the chancery of the Archdiocese of Agana, the place Pope John Paul II stayed in a single day in 1981, Father Romeo Convocar, the apostolic administrator, mentioned that abortion capsules obtained by telemedicine is now one among his greatest issues.
Last summer season, anticipating that the Supreme Court would quickly reverse the Roe v. Wade determination, the archdiocese distributed a pastoral letter to be learn aloud in its two dozen church buildings: “Hope is rising across our country that the scourge of abortion will be significantly curtailed.”
Catholic officers pushed for the territory to undertake a six-week ban. They resumed conducting a ceremony for the burial of unclaimed fetuses from miscarriages or abortions. They applauded Mr. Moylan’s authorized endeavors to reinstate the 1990 abortion ban.
Sharon O’Mallan, chairperson of the Guam Catholic Pro-Life Committee, known as the Dobbs determination overturning Roe v. Wade “great — now it turns it over to us, and we now decide what we want as our laws.”
In late April, she and Agnes White, a nurse, pointed to a billboard that they’d helped to create: “Healing the pain of abortion — one weekend at a time.”
The objective, they mentioned, was to recruit girls who had abortions to attend a confidential counseling retreat sponsored by a world spiritual group that opposes abortion.
‘I Would Gladly Go to Jail’
Advocates of abortion rights worry what’s going to occur on Guam — which has excessive charges of sexual assault and maternal mortality — if entry to abortion capsules is successfully blocked. The lawsuit filed by the Hawaii docs, as an example, argues that ladies on Guam would face heightened medical dangers, in addition to daunting monetary and logistical burdens. (According to census knowledge, the median annual family earnings, excluding navy households, was $58,000 in 2019, or about 20 % beneath the nationwide common.)
Famalao’an Rights, a reproductive rights nonprofit based in 2019,stepped up its organizing in 2022 when the proposed six-week ban was gaining traction. A legislative committee’s 2,200-page report on the invoice crackled with anguished emails and handwritten letters from the general public, principally opposing the ban.
Then got here the Dobbs determination and its aftermath. “It just felt like we were at the top of the hill, so close to the finish line, and then the finish line moved,” mentioned Kiana Joy Yabut, a frontrunner within the group.
The Dobbs determination was demoralizing for the activists, who’re bracing for extra anti-abortion payments and getting ready to assist girls get hold of abortions, even when it means breaking the regulation.
“I would gladly go to jail,” Ms. Yabut mentioned.
Women on Guam mentioned they’ve already been coping with the problem and stigma of abortion for years.
Happy Tingson was working as a lodge housekeeper in 2015, when she turned pregnant. She instructed solely two folks: her greatest good friend, Rhea Patino, and her boyfriend on the time.
“Not a single smile on his face,” mentioned Ms. Tingson, who was comforted by Ms. Patino and one other good friend when she turned emotional throughout an interview at her sister’s home. “He was pretty much saying, ‘It’s not the right time for us to have it, we’re not financially stable,’ ” Ms. Tingson mentioned.
Ms. Patino drove Ms. Tingson to the Pregnancy Control Clinic, which has since closed, to obtain the process, which value $500 in 2015. “When I finally got it done, I felt kind of broken,” Ms. Tingson mentioned.
She by no means instructed her dad and mom, who at the moment are lifeless, she mentioned. She nonetheless hasn’t instructed her older brother.
Asked if any of her associates had additionally undergone an abortion, Ms. Patino interrupted: “Me.”
When Ms. Patino, a waitress, turned pregnant within the fall of 2020, she and her boyfriend on the time agreed that they may not afford to boost a toddler.
“I felt helpless,” she mentioned. “Try talking to a doctor, and they’re like, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t support that.’ ”
Ms. Patino, who by then was seven weeks pregnant, determined that essentially the most dependable possibility was to fly to Florida. Planned Parenthood unexpectedly waived its $500 charge for her.
“They said the fact that you came from Guam, and had to fly out here — it’s so sad, because you have no clinic out there,” Ms. Pitino, now 32, recalled. “That’s so dangerous. How can they do that to you guys?”
Source: www.nytimes.com