What happens when more than half a state’s abortion clinics close in two years? Women have to wait. Sometimes as much as 20 days for an appointment.
It’s already happened in Texas, after the state imposed new hurdles on abortion providers. According to a new study from researchers at the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) at the University of Texas, in some parts of the state, wait times have already increased to as much as 20 days.
Unless the Supreme Court steps in to strike down another abortion clinic requirement, more closures are expected, leaving only 10 clinics in a state with 5.4 million women of reproductive age. Judging from TxPEP’s current data, that would mean longer waits in more cities — and, say the researchers, more later abortions.
Under the full force of the law, parts of which are temporarily on hold, TxPEP researchers estimate that the number of second-trimester abortions would nearly double, from 6,600 in 2013 to over 12,000 with only 10 clinics.
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“The increase in second-trimester abortion is concerning from a public health perspective, since later abortions, although very safe, are associated with a higher risk of complications compared to early abortions,” said Dr. Daniel Grossman, a co-author of the study and a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. “Later abortion procedures are also significantly more costly to women.”
In 2013, then-Gov. Rick Perry passed a law — over the filibuster of then-Sen. Wendy Davis — that included multiple new requirements for abortion providers, touted as protecting women’s health. One provision required all abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Another, which was slated to go into effect later, said abortions had to take place in expensive and cavernous ambulatory surgical centers, or ASCs. The American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists both opposed the law, saying it would jeopardize women’s health.
The Supreme Court allowed the admitting privileges provision to go into effect in November 2013, but has twice prevented the ASC requirement from going into effect. The Court, which begins its new term today, has been asked to hear both provisions. It is also considering whether to take up Mississippi’s admitting privilege requirement, which would shutter that state’s last clinic.
The state of Texas has contended in court that the new requirements don’t place a substantial obstacle in the way of women seeking abortion, pointing out that in Texas’s major cities, clinics have been able to comply both both laws.
To find out if that was true, researchers with TxPEP made monthly “mystery calls” since November 2013, when the admitting privileges requirement first started closing clinics. In Dallas and Fort Worth, for example, where a little less than a third of Texas’s abortions were performed in the study period, waiting times dramatically increased, from 5 to 20 days.








