Texas Strips Women of Their Health and Rights
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
SAN ANTONIO — In Texas, how far women have come can be measured by how far they have to go. Scores of medical facilities have been shuttered in Texas, stranding almost a million women hundreds of miles from a healthcare facility that they might need. The reason? These facilities provide, among other services, safe, legal abortions. Last week, the U.S. Appeals Court for the 5th Circuit affirmed Texas state restrictions on abortion access, closing 13 more clinics overnight. Overall, 80 percent of Texas abortion clinics have closed since the law went into effect.
Imagine the headline: “A Federal appeals court in Texas has ruled that 80 percent of gun stores in Texas must close.” Self-proclaimed patriots in Texas would be up in arms. But in the Lone Star State, not all rights are created equal. A woman’s right to choose, her right to terminate a pregnancy, her right to privacy, was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973, more than 40 years ago, in its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.
The Texas Legislature, along with Gov. Rick Perry and Attorney General (and current Republican candidate for governor) Greg Abbott, imposed laws in 2013 creating two significant barriers to the operation of clinics in Texas that perform abortions: First, doctors in the clinics were required to have admitting privileges in nearby hospitals. Second, a series of architectural standards were devised, applicable only to abortion clinics, mandating massive renovations to facilities in order to stay open.
Pro-choice activists call these regulations “TRAP laws,” for “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.” The nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that focuses on reproductive-health issues, reported recently that “26 states have laws or policies that regulate abortion providers and go beyond what is necessary to ensure patients’ safety; all apply to clinics that perform surgical abortion.”
Jeffrey Hons, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Texas, told me, “We are the southernmost and westernmost place where you can find an abortion in Texas, and there’s a whole lot of Texas that is south and west of us.”
Click here to read the full column posted at Truthdig.
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