AUSTIN, Texas _ The Texas abortion law struck down last month by the Supreme Court appears to have curtailed access to the procedure for Hispanic women far more than any other group, a Dallas Morning News analysis of state data has found.
In 2014 _ the first full year since restrictions on abortion doctors, pills and clinics forced facilities to close _ women in Texas had 9,000 fewer abortions than the year before. That's a 14 percent drop in abortions statewide, a much bigger drop than seen in previous years.
But among Texas' Hispanic women, the drop in abortions was especially steep: The number dropped 18 percent from 2013 to 2014, data show.
That drop of about 4,400 abortions in one year is more than three times what Hispanic women were experiencing before the law took effect, an analysis of the last five available years of data shows. Most of that decline can be traced to abortion clinic closures in the Rio Grande Valley, which is predominantly Hispanic.
No other demographic came close to seeing that impact.
Before clinics closed en masse, abortions among black women were falling annually at a clip of about 5 percent, according to data published by the Texas Department of State Health Services. After the law took hold, the number of black women getting the procedure dropped by 7.5 percent in one year.
White Texas women were having about 9 percent fewer abortions each year before 2014. After the law, their abortion numbers dropped only 6.7 percent.
"The data shows not only that the drop in the number of safe, legal abortions provided was clearly linked to the elimination of access but also, and most especially, that the elimination of clinics disproportionately impacted Latinas," said Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health in New York.
"The data shows exactly why the Supreme Court struck down the provisions" of the law, she added, "because they are harmful to women and their families."
The data was released days after the court's 5-3 ruling that the law, which caused more than half of the state's abortion clinics to close, created an undue burden on women seeking abortions in the state. It's unclear how many of those clinics will be in a position to reopen, even with the law struck down.
Nearly three-quarters of Texas counties saw fewer abortions among their residents from 2013 to 2014. Women living in the Texas Panhandle, West Texas and the Valley _ which saw the largest increases in driving distances to the nearest abortion facility _ experienced some of the biggest drops in abortions.
The 2013 law had several parts, including a ban on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy that was not challenged in court. The provisions that clinics found most damaging were requirements that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and the clinics meet the standards of outpatient surgical centers.
When the law took effect, clinics across the state began closing immediately.
In 2014 alone, the state lost 10 facilities. The number fluctuated throughout the year due to court rulings that either blocked certain restrictions temporarily or allowed them to go into effect. For a two-week period in October, only eight clinics were open. The state had 40 before the law was passed.
Throughout the yearslong battle over the restrictions, abortion rights advocates pointed to the dearth of clinics in the Rio Grande Valley, where predominately poor and Hispanic women had to travel hundreds of miles for an abortion.
That travel, they argued, was out of reach for women who couldn't afford the trip or take multiple days off to see a doctor.
That concern was valid, according to data derived from characteristics the state requires clinics to collect on every abortion performed in Texas, including the woman's ethnicity.
Hispanic women who lived in Hidalgo County, in the Valley, had 60 percent fewer abortions in 2014 than the year before. That's nearly five times the rate at which abortions fell for that demographic, in that county, in the four years prior.
In Cameron County, the Valley's second largest, the trend is similar. Abortions among its residents dropped by about 49 percent after the law took effect, compared with an annual decline in preceding years of about 20.5 percent.
More than 90 percent of women in each county are nonwhite, and 36 percent live below the federal poverty line.
Republican lawmakers and state leaders maintain that they passed and support the law because it made the procedure safer for women. But the Supreme Court ruled that the virtual absence of any health benefit of the restrictions made enforcing them unconstitutional.
John Seago, legislative director of the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life, said it's "undoubtable" that the clinic closures contributed to the drop in abortions in 2014. But he said he doesn't believe that's the only reason Texas saw a decline.
"We are having a national trend of fewer elective abortions," Seago said. "And that's going to continue, even after this (Supreme Court) ruling."
The 2014 data was released three days after the Supreme Court voted to strike down Texas' restrictions. Trisha Trigilio, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, alleges the state was sitting on the data because it shows that women living in regions that lost clinics and women of color were unconstitutionally burdened by the restrictions.
The ACLU wrote to John Hellerstedt, the commissioner of the Department of State Health Services, on June 15 asking the agency to release the 2014 data. In it, the group said it had come to its attention that the data was ready to be published in March, and that "upper-level supervisors" within the department told employees to lie and say the information was not complete.
State officials have said they couldn't release the data because the study wasn't yet finalized.
