“I can’t just sit back and watch us come back to 1972”

• A new law came into effect in Texas this month banning all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

• Dr Alan Braid said in a Washington Post editorial that he performed an abortion beyond that limit anyway.

• “I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do to all patients,” he wrote.

• See more stories on the Insider business page.

A doctor said he broke Texas’ new restrictive law and performed an abortion, explaining his decision in an editorial published by the Washington Post on Saturday.

Dr Alan Braid, who provides abortion care in San Antonio, said he spent nearly 45 years as an obstetrician / gynecologist in Texas, during which he delivered 10,000 babies, performed smears and pelvic exams and performed abortions.

“Then this month everything changed,” Braid wrote, citing the controversial Texas law that came into effect on September 1 that banned all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy without an exemption for rape or incest.

“This has shut down about 80% of the abortion services we provide,” he said, adding that the law also allows him to be sued for at least $ 10,000.

But Braid said on the morning of September 6, he performed an abortion for a woman who was in her first trimester but was over the limit set by the new law.

“I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do to all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care,” he wrote. “I fully understood that there could be legal consequences – but I wanted to make sure Texas didn’t get away with its attempt to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested.”

Other abortion providers in the state said they refused most women who contacted them to request an abortion since the new law took effect. Abortion rights advocates say most women don’t even know they’re pregnant after six weeks.

Braid said he broke the law because he believed abortion was “an essential part of health care” and because he remembers what it was like when he started his residency in 1972, prior to the Roe v. Wade the following year.

“In the hospital that year, I saw three teenage girls die from illegal abortions,” he wrote. “I can’t just sit back and watch us go back to 1972.”

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