The last two years have been a rollercoaster ride for Texas abortion providers. In the past six months alone, clinics in the state have been threatened with closure, been granted reprieves from those closures, had those reprieves overturned forcing them to shut down for nearly two weeks, and, most recently, been allowed to re-open.
The legal tussle stems from Texas House Bill 2, a 2013 law which imposes a series of strict requirements on abortion providers and clinics. On Wednesday, the controversial law is back in court, this time in a full appeal to the notoriously conservative fifth circuit court of appeals.
The plaintiffs – a coalition of Texas abortion providers – will argue, as they did in a lower court, that key provisions of House Bill 2 place an undue burden on abortion services.
The main provision the plaintiffs seek to block is a requirement that abortion clinics meet the same building standards as ambulatory surgical centres (ASCs), facilities specially equipped for more risky outpatient procedures. That would mean widening clinic hallways, replacing ventilation systems or even building entirely new facilities. The ASC requirement, which would have taken effect on 1 September 2014, would have forced dozens of Texas clinics to close and left just seven clinics to serve the second-largest US state.
In an eleventh-hour ruling last August, US district judge Lee Yeakel blocked the ASC requirement. Yeakel also lifted another provision of the Texas bill – that abortion doctors have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic – for two clinics in El Paso and McAllen.
Texas filed an emergency appeal with the fifth circuit, which overturned Yeakel’s ruling, forcing affected clinics to close temporarily. But after an emergency counter-appeal, the US supreme court ordered Yeakel’s ruling to be restored pending a full hearing by the fifth circuit.
Most of the affected clinics have since re-opened, though the uncertainty took its toll.
The fifth circuit court of appeals is expected to uphold Texas’s abortion law, as it did for a previous challenge to the admitting privileges requirement. But the ruling – no matter which way it goes – will likely face further appeal.
“I am not hopeful that we are going to get a ruling in our favor but am hopeful that we showed that women are disproportionately affected by these medically unnecessary laws,” Amy Hagstrom-Miller, CEO of plaintiff Whole Women’s Health, said in a statement. “We will anxiously be awaiting the Fifth Circuit Court’s decision and actively preparing to mobilize either through the legal process or in our communities to keep our doors open.”
Legal experts expect the case to end up at the US supreme court.
