Lines in Sand: Abortion and the Lone Star State

Abstract

On June 24th, 2022 the Supreme Court overruled the 1973 landmark decision of Roe v Wade with Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Within a month, eleven states had banned abortion completely or implemented a ban starting at six weeks of pregnancy. In the state of Texas, twenty-three clinics closed their doors, and a vast landscape of inaccessibility to reproductive healthcare was created. The dire need for safe and legal abortions for Texans became wholeheartedly unmet, with the only state bordering Texas with legal abortion rights being New Mexico, a rural and already healthcare deficient state. This created a huge emotional, infrastructural, and financial barrier for many Texans required to drive hundreds of miles to receive an abortion. My thesis looks at the architecture of abortion clinics and the landscape of accessibility to reproductive healthcare. It explores ideas of boundaries and overlapping contested space at a multitude of scales. In what ways can design articulate these boundaries as safe, steady, and secure while also communicating ideas of openness, transparency, and resiliency? Can overlapping boundaries and layers of law, terrain, ownership, and infrastructure be used to form, site, and compose the spatial experience of a new system of clinics along the fringes of Texas? With these thoughts in mind, I explore how the scale of the clinic can subvert the power of state legislation and provide much needed care for women throughout Texas.