The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is considering an appeal of Texas laws restricting access to abortions.
Covering the story for Houston Public Radio is health and science reporter Carrie Feibel.
Feibel says Texas wants to restrict doctors who perform abortions to practicing in an ambulatory surgical center. “You have to have a certain architectural layout to your recovery room. You have to have separate locker rooms for men and women,” Feibel says. “You have to have certain janitorial and linen facilities. So, most of the abortion clinics that are in the suit, they’re just a regular clinic or maybe just a doctor’s office, maybe a gynecologist who does abortions just as part of the regular practice. So they would have to either lease space in a surgery center or buy one or build one. They cost upwards of $2 million to $3 million. So the clinics contend that this is just a way to put them out of business.”
Louisiana is now embroiled in an appeal of a law passed by the state legislature that requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges in a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. Proponents say it’s aimed at protecting women’s health. Opponents say it’s an unnecessary obstacle.
Louisiana is now embroiled in an appeal of a law passed by the state legislature requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges in a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. Proponents say it's aimed at protecting women's health. Opponents say it's an unnecessary obstacle.
That argument has already gone through the Texas case, and the state won the right to require those admitting privileges.
“The effect was the clinics did shut down, and we lost about half of the clinics in Texas,” Feibel says. “Now some of those closed for other reasons, but it is clear that a significant number of clinics couldn’t get doctors the privileges they needed.”
She says the case is part of a national trend that abortion-rights proponents call TRAP laws.
“Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers. Various states have passed laws saying that doctors have to have privileges, that clinics have to be surgery centers. There has to be all these other things that the clinics have to do and it becomes so restrictive or expensive that they can’t function any more.”
She says courts have made differing interpretations of what is considered an undue burden when a woman is seeking an abortion, which the Supreme Court has ruled is a constitutional right. She expects more cases centering on those restrictions to ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
