- http://www.texastribune.org/texas-health-resources/abortion-texas/fight-over-planned-parenthood-states-slash-service/
- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/us/storm-over-womens-health-care-in-texas-had-been-brewing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
- http://www.texastribune.org/library/multimedia/video-series-fertile-ground/
Provide names of other journalists involved.
Emily Ramshaw, editor, Texas Tribune
Pam Belluck, reporter, The New York Times
Thanh Tan, multimedia producer, Texas Tribune*
*Tan is currently employed by the Seattle Times
List date(s) this work was published or aired.
Mar. 8, 2012 Mar. 22, 2012
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
The Texas Tribune, in conjunction with its content parter The New York Times, has been a national leader in covering women’s health, from state lawmakers’ efforts to force Planned Parenthood out of business in Texas to their sweeping budget cuts for contraception and cancer screenings. The two stories featured here both ran in The New York Times (one on page 1) and The Texas Tribune concurrently. They highlighted the dramatic closures of reproductive health clinics for poor immigrant women along the Texas-Mexico border, and the behind-the-scenes political drama that led hundreds of thousands of the state’s neediest women to lose access to birth control and cancer screenings.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
The documents and web resources we relied upon were largely records on Texas history of anti-abortion legislation, state archives of long-past family planning debates, financial records to track state and federal spending on Texas contraception and cancer screenings, and state-produced anti-abortion pamphlets distributed at individual family planning providers.
Explain types of human sources used.
We relied heavily on both family planning providers and immigrant women on the Texas-Mexico border, many of them who spoke no English, were not employed, and believed they were likely to get pregnant again because they were losing access to contraception. We also relied on state and federal health officials and long-since retired lawmakers who could recall the legislative days when contraception and abortion were not synonymous in Texas.
Results:
Through dogged beat reporting, comprehensive data applications and a dramatic documentary-style series, the Tribune has driven the dialogue around reproductive health in this red state, and in particular, the national battle over Texas’ Medicaid Women’s Health Program. These two stories in particular made national headlines, sent our reporters onto the airwaves and cable news, and drew national advocacy groups to mobilize in Texas. In the upcoming legislative session, a bipartisan group of lawmakers — under pressure from persistent media attention — is working to restore the cuts they made to family planning in the last legislative session, an effort to undo two years worth of unplanned pregnancies that have cost taxpayers an estimated $270 million.
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
There have been no corrections or clarifications to these reports, and no one has challenged their accuracy.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
Don’t just tell the story by way of facts and figures and passionate interest groups; get out into the community. There is no way we would have grasped the scope of these family planning cuts, and the circumstances of the women affected by them, if we had not visited the shuttering clinics on the border, and spent time in the homes of the young, impoverished immigrant women who rely on them to prevent the births of more babies they cannot afford.