AUSTIN, TEXAS — An advocacy group filed another federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging a new provision of Texas’ tough restrictions on abortion, less than a week after an appeals court reversed a previous suit and found that the stricter limits don’t impose an undue burden on women’s health.
The Center for Reproductive Rights’ suit is the first to challenge part of a new state law that doesn’t take effect until Sept. 1, but mandates that all abortions, including those induced via medication, take place in an ambulatory surgical center.
The New York-based center says just six abortion clinics in Texas currently meet those standards and that upgrades to do so are so costly that only about three would be able to meet them by the fall, leaving fewer than 10 clinics in a state with 13 million women. For now, 24 Texas clinics provide abortions.
Passed last summer, the omnibus abortion law already requires abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the clinic where they perform the procedure, that they follow strict instructions for pill-induced medical abortions and perform abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy only if the health of the mother is in danger or the fetus isn’t viable.
As with the previous suit, this one also challenges the admitting privileges provision, this time on behalf of Whole Woman’s Health in McAllen and Reproductive Health Services in El Paso, which the Center for Reproductive Rights says may close despite being “among the last, if not the only, providers offering abortion care in their communities.”
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