Appeals Court Ruling Closes 13 Abortion Clinics in Texas

DALLAS - Thirteen abortion clinics in Texas will be forced to close beginning next Thursday after a federal appellate court sided with the State of Texas in its yearlong legal battle over its sweeping abortion law and allowed the state to enforce one of the law's toughest provisions while the case was being appealed.

The decision by the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, will have a sharp and immediate effect on abortion services in Texas, lawyers for abortion providers said. The ruling gave Texas permission to require all abortion clinics in the state to meet the same building, equipment and staffing standards as hospital-style surgical centers, standards that abortion providers said were unnecessary and costly, but that the state argued improved patient safety.

Thirteen clinics whose facilities do not meet the standards will have to close overnight, leaving Texas - a state with 5.4 million women of reproductive age, the second-most in the country - with only seven abortion providers, all in Houston, Austin and two other metropolitan regions. No abortion facilities will be open in any city or town west or south of San Antonio.

'Today's ruling has gutted Texas women's constitutional rights and access to critical reproductive health care, and stands to make safe, legal abortion essentially disappear overnight,' said Nancy Northup, the president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, whose lawyers were part of the legal team representing the clinics that sued the state.

Two of the panel's three judges were appointed by Republican presidents, and the third was appointed by President Obama. Their decision is temporary and left open the possibility that the clinics could reopen as the case proceeds. Nevertheless, abortion providers and their lawyers said they were considering all of their legal options, including possibly appealing to the Supreme Court or to the full Fifth Circuit.

In July 2013, the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature passed some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country, after a marathon filibuster that turned Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis into a national political star and set the stage for her campaign for governor. Some parts of the law were already being enforced, but the surgical-center requirement had yet to take effect.

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