When the final provision of Texas’ omnibus anti-abortion law, HB 2, goes into effect Monday, September 1, hundreds of thousands of women — especially those who are poor and live outside of major cities — will see their access to safe, legal abortion drop dramatically.
Despite Democratic state senator Wendy Davis’s 10-hour filibuster, and the people’s filibuster that followed, HB 2 passed the Texas legislature in July 2013. The bill was part of an unprecedented wave of state-level abortion restrictions that swept the country over the past three years.
HB 2 includes four new restrictions on reproductive care:
- A requirement that physicians performing abortions have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of the facility;
- A ban on abortions at 20 weeks post-fertilization or later, except in cases where the woman’s life is in danger or where there is severe fetal abnormality (but not rape);
- Further restrictions on the use of the medical abortion pill;
- A requirement that all facilities meet the standards of amulatory surgical centers (ASCs), even if they only offer medical abortion.
It’s the last provision that goes into effect September 1. Already, 19 of the state’s 41 clinics have had to close as a result of HB 2, and 16 more are in line to shut down on Monday. That will leave between six and eight legal abortion providers in a state of more than 26 million people, of whom about 5.5 million are women of reproductive age.
“That’s one legal abortion provider for every one million Texans who could become pregnant, according to an estimate from the University of Texas’ Texas Policy Evaluation Project,” Andrea Grimes writes for RH Reality Check. “Those eight facilities will all be located along the I-35 and I-45 corridors, in major cities in the eastern half of the sprawling state. No legal abortion facilities will operate south or west of San Antonio.”
According to the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, the number of women of reproductive age in Texas living more than 200 miles from a clinic providing abortion in Texas increased from 10,000 in May 2013 to 290,000 by April 2014. When the ASC requirement goes into effect this will increase to 752,000. And almost 2 million women will live more than 50 miles from an abortion provider.
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