Abortion clinics try to rebuild, but say damage already done
Despite Supreme Court ruling, Texas lawmakers pledge to renew fight
AUSTIN — The U.S. Supreme Court may have dealt abortion providers a big legal win Monday, but supporters and activists say the damage already has been done.
More than half of the abortion-providing clinics in the state have closed amid three years of legal wrangling over new restrictions on the procedure, dropping the number from 41 — when the law was signed in summer 2013 — to 19 and lengthening wait times for patients.
Despite a sweeping le- gal victory on their side, abortion-rights supporters have an uphill effort as they seek to rebuild shattered networks while opponents work with allies in the Texas Legislature to limit the procedure in the 2017 session.
“There’s no turning the clock back,” said Andrea Ferrigno, corporate vice president of Whole Women’s Health, an abortion provider who said she s ready to start repairing the damage caused by the struck down abortion regulations. “We didn’t want the situation to get to such drastic consequences where the damage was going to be so deep that it was going to take longer to repair. Unfortunately, Texas politicians did not hear us, and now we have to do the work to repair it.”
The ruling also high-
lights what has become an increasingly common occurrence in Austin, where the overwhelming Republican majority forces through laws over the strenuous objections of Democratic legislators and expert witnesses only to spend years and millions of taxpayer dollars defending them in court, not always successfully.
In addition to the 2013 abortion law known as House Bill 2, the state’s voter ID law and redistricting maps remain tied up in federal courts.
And conservative lawmakers, led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, made no secret of their desire to impose new restrictions on abortion when the Legislature convenes in January.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday on a 5-3 vote that Texas’ law requiring abortion providers gain admitting privileges to nearby hospitals and that abortion facilities mimic the standards of ambulatory surgical centers were medically unnecessary, too strict and created an unconstitutional barrier to women seeking the procedure. The high court tossed both of those provisions.
The court was not asked to rule on the state’s ban on almost all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy or restrictions on the use of the so-called abortion pill, both of which remain in place.
Joe Pojman, the Texas Alliance for Life executive director, said Monday’s ruling proved the current court is hostile to the medical regulation of abortion. The silver lining, he said, is the court fight has driven out doctors who otherwise would have performed the procedure for the last three years.
“I’m guessing some highly incompetent physician who could not get admitting privileges at a local hospital stopped abortions on women, and that’s a good thing,” Pojman said. “They can now get back into the abortion business and we’re very sorry about that, but at least for three years, women were protected from physicians who probably shouldn’t be practicing medicine anyway.”
Other legal fights in limbo
The most recent data available show that the number of abortions in Texas dropped 14 percent — from 63,168 in 2013, to 54,191 in 2014 — the first full-year after the law took effect.
Reopening clinics closed since the omnibus abortion law went into effect will not be fast or simple. In addition to spending $5,000 to reapply for a license from the Texas Department of State Health Services, providers would have to rehire and replace staff and doctors who since have moved on to other jobs, a process that could take months for providers willing to risk reopening in the face of promises from lawmakers to pass new restrictions.
At least one provider has indicated she will not attempt to reopen her shuttered clinic.
“Even if I had the money, why would I invest it in a facility that could be written out of business with the stroke of a pen?” said Ginny Braun, a former provider who closed the Routh Street Women’s Clinic in Dallas.
After three years of legal fights, the abortion case was adjudicated rather quickly compared to the other high-profile cases from Texas that have been bandied from court to court. State lawmakers still are waiting for final judgments on cases that have taken nearly twice as long to sort out, notably the lawsuits against the state’s voter ID law and its redistricting plans, both of which Texas Republicans approved in 2011.
“So far, all the courts have found that it’s discriminatory but voter ID law continues. That’s why they call it a zombie law, because courts have already ruled it illegal but it continues to go forward while the 5th Circuit chews it over,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
‘Extreme legislation’
The Texas voter ID law, passed by Texas Republicans in 2011, is the strictest in the country and has been a legal target for progressive groups who argued it unconstitutionally hampers the voting rights of African-American and Latino voters.
Federal judges who oversaw Texas election law changes blocked the measure, but that was before the Supreme Court did away with preclearance rules under the Voting Rights Act that required any changes in election laws to be approved by a federal court.
The law remains in effect, but opponents launched another federal lawsuit in south Texas that resulted in a second ruling against the statute. The measure now is under consideration at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is racing toward a July 20 deadline to address the case before opponents can ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
In addition, Texas lawmakers are nearing another redistricting effort after the 2020 Census, when they will have to draw congressional and state legislature maps.
District maps drawn in 2011 after the 2010 Census still are awaiting a verdict from a court on their constitutionality. Civil rights groups argued that the GOP-drawn maps failed to account correctly for the growth in Latino and black populations.
“It seems to be a thread. The abortion law, the voter ID law, the redistricting law all sort of have that same thread, that they look at the extreme legislation they can pass when there is a considerable amount of debate and question about the legality of going to those extremes and voting down all or almost all ameliorative amendments. The evidence is starting to stack up in that regard,” said Jose Garza, a lawyer who gave oral arguments to the U.S. Supreme Court to fight Texas’ redistricting maps in 2012.