Three more abortion clinics in Texas have been forced to close this week, thanks to extreme restrictions passed last summer.
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Texas had 44 abortion clinics just 3 years ago, but only 19 have survived the onslaught of restrictive laws so far. If the laws are not changed or blocked by courts in the next few months, Texas could be down to only 6 clinics in September, a frightening number in a state where there are currently about 70,000 legal abortion procedures each year. The abortion clinic closures, coupled with the closing of some 55 family planning clinics after Texas cut their funding, has already created a crisis in availability of reproductive health services. Already, experts, such as Amy Hagstrom, Founder of the Whole Women’s Health, are reporting that some Texas women are resorting to dangerous self-induced or illegal abortions.
“As a result of additional provisions of this law, the number will likely decrease to six as of September 1,” Charlotte Taft, the director of the Abortion Care Network said in a statement. “Services will only be in the largest cities. There will be hundreds of miles without any safe abortion care. With a population of nearly 27 million people, this is a state of emergency for Texas women.”
The law in question, HB 2, passed last summer and has been kept in place after several ongoing court battles. It restricts the prescription of medication abortion, bans abortion after 20 weeks, requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles, and mandates that facilities where abortion is performed meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers.
Of these regulations, the admitting privileges requirement and surgical center standards are the most onerous. The admitting privileges requirement is a catch-22 law. The abortion clinic doctors have simply been refused admitting privileges. Doctors are not receiving admitting privileges because of political pressure – and some doctors cannot receive them because they have to be flown in from other areas because of threats to local doctors. What’s more, in the rare case of a complication requiring hospital admission, the hospital must admit the patient, whether or not the doctor has admitting privileges at that hospital. In addition, the surgical center standards impose high costs for unnecessary structural and operational changes, and very little time to adhere to them.
The three clinics that closed this week were located in communities with high poverty rates and many uninsured or underinsured residents. Two were in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the poorest areas in the United States, which now does not have even one reproductive health clinic left. Rio Grande women will be forced to travel two and a half hours to reach the nearest abortion clinic. The dozens of clinic closures in Texas have had a significant impact on low-income and rural women who often do not have the money or means of transportation to travel long distances to a clinic.
Media Resources: The Houston Chronicle 3/5/14; RH Reality Check 3/5/14; ThinkProgress 3/6/14; Associated Press 3/6/14; The Center for Reproductive Rights 3/6/14; Rachel Maddow Show 3/4/14; Feminist Newswire 11/1/13, 11/5/13, 11/20/13, 11/27/13