AUSTIN, Texas _ Some elective surgeries and procedures, including abortions, resumed in Texas on Wednesday, one month after Gov. Greg Abbott banned them to open up bed space and medical equipment for COVID-19 patients.
The updated executive order gives the go-ahead for surgeries in facilities where it would not deplete hospital capacity or medical resources needed to cope with the coronavirus.
The only allowed elective surgeries must "diagnose or correct a serious medical condition" and help the patient avoid death or serious adverse medical consequences, the order said.
But Abbott's order does not list the types of procedures allowed and does not clarify whether abortions are allowed under the lifted restrictions. Abbott also didn't specify whether abortions were included in his order limiting elective surgeries, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton interpreted the ban to include most abortions. A federal appeals court on Monday agreed with Paxton, the latest ruling in a monthlong legal battle over access to the procedure.
In a news conference Friday, Abbott said he'd leave the prospect of an abortion ban up to the judicial system.
"Ultimately, obviously that will be a decision for courts to make," he said, adding that abortions were not part of his order.
On Wednesday, abortion providers said the lifting of an elective surgery ban included access to abortions.
"(COVID-19) has created an even greater need for access to essential and time-sensitive health care like abortion," Dyana Limon-Mercado, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, said in a statement. "Planned Parenthood believes that the exception in the new executive order means that, like other similar facilities, it can resume providing services."
And Whole Woman's Health clinics in Austin, Fort Worth and McAllen opened Wednesday, offering abortions for patients, according to Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman's Health Alliance.
The new executive order "allows providers to resume both medication and procedural abortions," Hagstrom Miller said, adding that a hearing for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for next Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for Paxton said the office can't comment on, confirm or deny potential litigation.
Under Abbott's order, a health care facility must show in writing that it will be able to reserve at least 25% of its hospital capacity for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, and show that it will not need to request personal protective equipment from any public source.
While speaking as a guest Wednesday on the Chad Hasty radio show on KFYO in Lubbock, Abbott said his coronavirus task force has fielded a number of questions from doctors about the updated order.
"We get so many calls from so many doctors trying to see: 'Is this OK? Is that OK? Is this not OK?'" Abbott said. "We actually had allowed more surgical procedures than what doctors were thinking were allowed, and so we tried to encourage them to go ahead and do even more than what they were doing."
Baylor Scott & White Health, which has several medical centers in the region, said it plans to move forward with certain procedures, including biopsies for potential cancer diagnosis, beginning Wednesday.
"We are confident we can safely care for patients who meet the criteria set forth in the executive order _ patients who need biopsies for potential cancer diagnoses, for example _ as soon as Wednesday, while maintaining an adequate supply of personal protective equipment," a statement from the hospital read. "We will continue to evaluate this balance daily."
