'Ride to Decide' bus tour discusses abortion rights

AUSTIN, Texas - A group advocating to protect reproductive freedom made a stop in Austin on Tuesday.

Organizers said the national bus tour started at the Republican National Convention. They will visit at least five more states, and they plan to finish at the Democratic National Convention.

"People's lives are being put at risk," Free & Just Deputy Director Ashley Quenneville said.

"Lives are at stake in this conversation," Texas Alliance for Life Amy O’Donnell said.

The organization "Free and Just" took the conversation about abortions on the road as a national bus tour called "Ride to Decide."

"It's tragic that people are crusading around in this bus advocating about taking unborn babies' lives and in so doing, misrepresenting our law, misrepresenting the poor medical care that some of them received and trying to blame it on our laws," O’Donnell said.

"The goal of this bus is to highlight how extreme attacks on our reproductive freedoms and abortion bans are impacting everyday people and families," Quenneville said.

DakotaRei Frausto shared her story on the bus stop. She said she was 17 years old when she found out she was pregnant.

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"I wasn't mentally capable of taking care of a child, and physically, I wasn't capable of continuing a pregnancy and caring for a child all while healing from birth," Frausto said.

Frausto said she traveled to New Mexico to get an abortion.

"It just doesn't make sense to put this extra barrier on people to have to travel so many miles out of state when they could access one here, because we know for a fact that abortion is health care," said Frausto.

"My heart goes out to the 17-year-old who faced an unplanned pregnancy and thought abortion was her only and best option," O’Donnell said. "There are organizations who will support them, who will help point them towards resources available to offset some of the cost and burden of an unplanned pregnancy, and really provide for their needs in very tangible ways."

Abortion laws in Texas are among the most restrictive in the U.S., but there are certain exceptions for when the mother’s life is at stake.

"Doctors don't know when it is that a patient's life is threatened, patients don't know how to access care, they don't know that they can, and doctors are even forbidden to just talk about everyone's options," Quenneville said.

"There's no confusion in our laws regarding saving women's lives," O’Donnell said.

Following the overturning of Roe v Wade, Austin City Council approved the Grace Act, which decriminalizes abortions in Austin.

"We were directing our city departments, particularly our police department, to completely deprioritize the investigation of these so-called abortion crimes," Austin City Council District 2 Representative Vanessa Fuentes said.

Fuentes said since then, more than 30 cities across the nation have passed similar protections.