Pro-choice supporters are vowing to keep fighting a Texas law that last week — with a court’s permission — led to suspension of abortion services at about a dozen facilities.
Currently eight or fewer abortion clinics are operating in Texas, far fewer than the 41 facilities that were serving Texas customers two years ago.
“What we have been fearing is now official: Texas faces a health care crisis, brought on by its own legislators,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, chief executive of Whole Woman’s Health, said Friday.
She said that a new advocacy and education effort called Whole Women’s Texas Action Fund would work to “galvanize and mobilize the people of Texas” to keep abortion clinics open.
Abortion opponents, meanwhile, praised the ruling by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, who heard the case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Lakey.
“While this ruling is a victory, as a partial stay, the ruling is not permanent,” the Texas Right to Life group said. The work “to preserve the full integrity of HB2 is not finished.”
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The law, enacted in July 2013, also has been challenged in another court case, and parts of the law have been upheld by a panel of the 5th Circuit.
In late August, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that a section of the law, which requires abortion clinics to meet standards of ambulatory surgical centers (ASC), is cost-prohibitive for clinics, and forcing clinics to close would create undue travel burdens for women to get abortions. He granted an emergency stay of the ASC provision — and a requirement that abortion doctors have local hospital-admitting privileges — for all clinics.
The ruling prompted the Whole Woman’s Health clinic in McAllen to reopen and others to remain open.
The state appealed, and on Thursday, a three-judge appellate panel overturned most of Judge Yeakel’s ruling, allowing the law go into effect.
The state has shown a likelihood of success in showing that the ASC provision is constitutional, wrote Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, who was joined by Judge Jerry E. Smith and in part by Judge Stephen A. Higginson. As explained in a previous ruling on the law, “if the State establishes that a law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest, we do not second-guess the legislature regarding the law’s wisdom or effectiveness,” they wrote. The hospital-admitting provision, they noted, already has been upheld.
The panel chose kept the stay on building requirements for an El Paso clinic, but abortion supporters noted that the clinic was likely to remain closed.
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Thursday’s ruling meant that as many as 13 noncompliant abortion clinics had to immediately suspend abortion services.
“Today, our hearts are broken on behalf of the women and families in Texas that have been left behind by this 5th Circuit ruling,” said Ms. Miller, whose facilities in Fort Worth and McAllen ceased offering abortions on Friday.
A Whole Woman’s Health facility in San Antonio remains open, and a new clinic in New Mexico is close enough to serve women in western Texas, she said.
“This is a flat-out disaster,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “If the courts are going to allow right-wing politicians to simply shut down clinics, then the right to legal abortion is truly in danger,” she told supporters.
Lawyers with the Center for Reproductive Rights said Friday they are deciding how best to appeal Thursday’s 5th Circuit ruling. The legal defense group is also involved in another challenge to HB2, and is awaiting to hear whether the full 5th Circuit will hear their case.
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, only a few Texas clinics, including ones in Fort Worth, Austin, Dallas and Houston, currently meet the law.
The year-old Planned Parenthood Southwest Fort Worth Health Center is “not impacted” by the ruling, Kelly Hart, senior director of government relations for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, told the Star-Telegram. That ambulatory-surgical center cost $6.5 million and was privately funded by North Texas contributors, the newspaper said.
Laws like Texas’ are likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Similar laws have been challenged recently in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
• Cheryl Wetzstein can be reached at cwetzstein@washingtontimes.com.
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