New law leads to clinic closures
About one-third of Texas’ abortion providers have had to shut down clinics, leaving 24 in the state.
Thursday’s closure of abortion clinics in Beaumont and McAllen left 24 clinics licensed to operate in Texas, down from 36 in July, when Gov. Rick Perry signed stricter abortion regulations into law after two acrimonious special legislative sessions.
Abortion providers attributed the loss of one-third of the state’s clinics to House Bill 2’s requirement that abortion doctors obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic, and they warn that many more clinics could close if phase two of the law takes effect on Sept. 1.
Abortion providers said Thursday’s closings left no licensed clinic operating in the Rio Grande Valley, exacerbating the burden HB 2 has placed on low-income, rural women who cannot afford to miss work, arrange child care and pay other expenses associated with extensive travel.
“Politicians who have taken it upon themselves to second-guess both doctors and the private, personal decisions of women have eliminat- ed two critical sources of safe, legal, high-quality reproductive health care,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Melissa Conway, spokeswoman for Texas Right to Life, said the closings showed that HB 2 was working — weeding out clinics that cannot or will not comply with higher safety standards.
“Texans are no longer will-
ing to stand by as abortion providers continue to line their pockets, meanwhile endangering the health and safety of women,” Conway said.
The clinics closed Thursday were run by Whole Woman’s Health.
The McAllen clinic, which had stopped providing abortions when the hospital privileges rule went into effect Nov. 1, was finally closed after doctors couldn’t obtain privileges from seven available hospitals, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, chief executive of Whole Woman’s Health.
One doctor at the Beaumont clinic had admitting privileges but is 75 years old, and the decision to close the clinic came after other doctors couldn’t get the privileges, Hagstrom Miller said.
“We’ve done everything possible to keep our clinics open, but we were simply unable to survive with the new, medically unnecessary guidelines required by HB 2,” she said.
Shortly after HB 2 took effect, clinics closed or stopped offering abortions in cities including Dallas, Harlingen, McAllen, El Paso, Lubbock, Waco, Killeen and Fort Worth. Several have since reopened, including a Planned Parenthood clinic in Austin, after affiliated doctors obtained hospital privileges.
Last month, state regulators revoked the license of a Houston clinic, A Affordable Women’s Medical Center, after inspectors found that a doctor had performed abortions without hospital admitting privileges.
Whole Woman’s Health was among a group of abortion providers and doctors that filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the admitting-privileges requirement as an impermissible limit on access to abortion. A federal judge in Austin found the provision unconstitutional in October, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Texas to enforce the requirement while it considers a state appeal of that ruling.
Whole Woman’s Health still operates abortion clinics in Austin and Fort Worth, and the closings will help the organization focus on meeting a separate HB 2 provision. Set to take effect Sept. 1, that provision will require all abortions to be performed in an ambulatory surgical center, Hagstrom Miller said.
Currently, six surgical centers are licensed to offer abortions in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and at two sites in Houston.
Abortion providers argue that it would be too expensive for most clinic operators to comply with surgical center standards, which include sterile-environment ventilation systems and electrical-system backups. Abortion opponents scoff, saying providers have always found a way to meet tighter regulations and stay in business.