The results of the study come just after an announcement from the U.S. Supreme Court that it would take on a case challenging the constitutionality of the Texas state law known as HB 2, which would apply stricter standards to women’s health clinics that provide abortion services and leave Texas with just nine abortion providers statewide. The second provision requires every reproductive health care facility offering abortion services to meet the same hospital-like building standards as an ambulatory surgical center, which can amount to millions of dollars in medically unnecessary facility updates.
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Such a decision by the justices would have an impact in other states that have similar laws.
The law also includes a provision that protects women against cut-and-run abortionists by requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. This will leave many women in Texas without a nearby site to obtain abortions.
“We really see this as a women’s health protection and something that is reasonable”, Ciamarra said. Latina women living near the Mexican border and women who, due to cost or clinic proximity, had a hard time getting any reproductive health care at all, including Pap smears and contraception, reported abortion self-induction at significantly higher rates. “Abortionists should not be exempt from medical requirements that everyone else is required to follow”. They argued the case did deserve consideration because other courts had made dramatically different interpretations of the same FOIA exemption laws.
“Texas paints a devastating picture of what’s at state for women across the country – where women area already traveling hundreds of miles, crossing state lines and waiting weeks to get an abortion, if they can at all”.
Oral arguments in the case, which is Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, are not expected until February or later.
The Austin Chronicle’s Mary Tuma pointed out that 5.4 million women in Texas will be served by only 10 clinics if the Supreme Court failed to block the final parts of HB2.
Things could take a darker turn still next year, when the Supreme Court will hear a case against HB2. As The NY Times’ Adam Liptak reported, “The future of abortion rights in the United States probably rests nearly entirely in his hands, given the deadlock on the court between conservatives and liberals”. The final decision could make the difference between a tidal wave of anti-abortion bills and a trickle. “The state has wide discretion to pass laws ensuring Texas women are not subject to substandard conditions at abortion facilities”, he said in a statement Friday.
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Even if many women end up choosing safe abortion pill methods, this is a serious problem for public health and women’s rights, said Amy Hagstrom Miller on the press call. Yet the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief stating the Texas law does not serve a medical objective, according to the report. And the process of applying for hospital privileges is, at best, complicated.
