The closest US abortion clinic to Corpus Christi, Texas, is at least an 8-hour car ride away in New Mexico.
It’s a drive that fewer southern Texas women are taking due to the popularity of abortion pills, despite pro-life legislation attempting to restrict access in the state.
Out-of-state travel for abortions dropped 8 percent in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2024, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. In states without bans, abortions provided through clinics and via telehealth have fallen 5 percent so far in 2025, down from highs in 2023 and 2024.
Guttmacher’s researchers wrote that the declines “are likely driven in part by the availability of medication abortion.”
Jana Pinson, executive director of Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend, knows that while fewer abortions may be happening in clinics, they’re taking place in homes and college dorms. In the Corpus Christi area, Pinson sees women arrive at centers for pregnancy tests with pills already in their pockets—prescriptions they’ve received by mail or purchased across the border in Mexico.
“It really makes me angry when some pro-life groups in Texas say there’s no abortion in Texas,” she said. “There’s just as much as there ever was, but it’s chemical. It’s dark. It’s alone.”
When the Texas Heartbeat Act was passed in 2021, the pregnancy center, like others across the state, saw a surge in women testing earlier to get abortions before the legal cutoff. Then, the Dobbs ruling spurred a rise in out-of-state travel. But those trends have shifted again.
“We’ve seen a huge decline in surgical abortions and the huge, unbelievable rise of the pill,” Pinson said.
As medication become the most common method for abortion, pro-life advocates and centers across the country have had to adjust their strategies, aiming to reach women earlier in what has become a quicker and lonelier process.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said that 63 percent of abortions in America come through medication.
“The Biden-era, COVID-era decision to allow abortion drugs to be sent through the mail without in-person doctor visits has been a disaster for women,” Dannenfelser said. “It’s been a disaster for state sovereignty on the part of pro-life states and a disaster for babies.”
While Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised to investigate concerns about the safety of the abortion drug mifepristone and the risk for complications when taken outside of clinical supervision, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved another generic brand of the drug.
Ingrid Skop, a practicing ob-gyn in Texas and director of medical affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, has cared for women suffering from complications from the abortion pill and studied what she calls the FDA’s “regulatory malpractice” in allowing women to take the medication without seeing a doctor.
“Women are ordering these drugs without an ultrasound to rule out a potentially deadly ectopic pregnancy or to confirm gestational age,” said Skop.
Some women she’s encountered have been encouraged to keep abortion pills on hand so they can access them quickly if they become pregnant.
“I cared for a woman who took the drugs immediately upon discovering she was pregnant just because they were in her medicine cabinet, only to decide within hours that she really did desire her child,” Skop said. “She desperately sought me out to provide progesterone to reverse the mifepristone effect.”
Save the Storks, a pro-life organization that supports women with unexpected pregnancies, has also seen the effects of widespread access to the abortion pill.
“With a chemical abortion, especially if they receive the pills in the mail, there is a shorter period of time for them to second-guess their decision,” said CEO Diane Ferraro by email. “Oftentimes, the women view chemical abortion as an easier option, as they are not fully informed of the process.”
Ferraro added that women are also less likely to visit pregnancy health centers, since online searches prioritize links to mail-order abortion pill providers.
In southern Texas, Pinson said the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend has adapted to help women who either have taken or are considering the abortion pill: “We say that, really, our mission statement should be one word: pivot.”
Though the organization is pro-life, it offers pre-abortion screening for women who are planning to take abortion pills. The screening allows women to confirm their pregnancy test results and gives the pregnancy center staff an opportunity to share options besides abortion.
Staff also inform the women that if they change their mind after taking the pill, they can contact the center for help procuring medication to try to reverse it. (The treatment involves an off-label dose of progesterone to counteract the mifepristone. In contrast to some pro-life ob-gyns, several medical organizations say abortion pill reversal lacks adequate scientific backing.)
Coastal Bend also offers post-abortive pill scans. By its own count, of the first 40 women to get scans after taking abortion pills, staff still detected heartbeats in 10. Medication abortion is most effective early in pregnancy and can require repeated dosages for later gestation.
While some pro-lifers disapprove of pregnancy centers offering post-abortive scans, Pinson believes it is similar to their screenings for expectant moms. “If we see a baby, we send them to an ob-gyn. If we see a demise, we send them to the ER,” Pinson said.
Out of the 10 women who discovered in utero heartbeats at their screenings, two mothers chose to go out of state for a surgical abortion, while eight chose to keep the baby. All were born healthy.
Pinson wants the chance to talk to expectant moms before they take the pills, which is why Coastal Bend offers screenings for women who plan to abort. Her organization targeted its advertising so that when someone searches for abortion pills, its resources show up in the results.
Despite pro-life efforts, many women who undergo medication abortion—including hundreds of thousands of women who procure pills via telehealth each year—may never talk to anyone in the process.
“Getting them in is the challenge because they can get the pills so freely,” Pinson said.
While a medication abortion can seem simpler to women because it doesn’t require travel or involve other people, it also leaves women to go through the loss alone, bleeding heavily and sometimes seeing the remains of their aborted fetus.
When doing post-abortive counseling with women who regret their choice to take abortion pills, Pinson takes a similar approach as with those who had a surgical abortion. “At the end of the day … the loss of the baby is the same.”
