As the Texas Legislature prepares to pass more stringent regulations for abortion centers in the coming weeks, a second metropolitan area facility that would qualify under the proposed law quietly began offering the procedure last month in Fort Worth.
Planned Parenthood’s Southwest Fort Worth Health Center, which opened in May for family planning and preventive care, began offering surgical services on June 19. The $6.5 million, 19,000-square-foot facility would join Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center in Dallas as DFW’s lone legal abortion clinics, if Senate Bill 5 is approved as expected next week. Only four other clinics statewide would be qualified to handle the estimated 80,000 abortions performed annually in Texas by the state’s 42 clinics. Thirty-seven of those clinics would not qualify under the proposed new law, which would require abortion clinics to meet the same standards that surgical centers do, as well as mandate that a doctor who performs abortions have admitting privileges at an area hospital.
The lack of a legal ambulatory surgery center in West Texas would add to the burden of DFW’s two surgery centers. Officials at both centers say they will do their best to cope with the demand, but they fear the lack of access likely will result in unwanted births and unsafe alternatives.
Tenesha Duncan, Southwestern Women’s administrator, said her facility also has drawn women from Arkansas and Louisiana, which have stricter abortion laws than those in Texas. A filibuster at the end of the Legislature’s first special session by Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, drew national attention and galvanized supporters.
However, Republicans are confident they will be able to prevail in the second special session that convened Monday. Hearings were held Tuesday, and lawmakers were expected to break for the holiday weekend before reconvening next week. The full House is expected to vote on the measure before sending it to the Senate. The bill could pass the Legislature as soon as July 10 and could be signed quickly by Gov. Rick Perry.
In a statement this week, Perry said, “The Texas Legislature is poised to finish its history-making work this year by passing legislation to protect the unborn and women’s health.”
Texas would be the 13th state to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Five other states have regulated abortion clinics as surgical centers since last year.
Pro-choice supporters call these restrictions TRAPs, or Target Regulations of Abortion Providers. According to a Guttmacher Institute analysis, 27 states have such laws, covering about 60 percent of U.S women of reproductive age.
The Texas District of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposes the proposed restrictions because they “are not based on sound science” and “attempt to prescribe how physicians should care for their individual patients…SB 5 will not enhance patient safety or improve the quality of care that women receive. This bill does not promote women’s health, but erodes it by denying women in Texas the benefits of well-researched, safe, and proven protocols.”
Similarly, the Texas Medical Association—while not taking a stand on the bill—testified during the first special session that it was “concerned this legislation sets a dangerous precedent of the Legislature prescribing the details of the practice of medicine. These are determinations to be made by the medical community and science, not by the Legislature.”
Polls on the measures are mixed. Recent polling indicates Americans narrowly support banning abortions at 20 weeks. A May Gallup poll found that 20 percent want abortion to be illegal under all circumstances, 26 percent want it to be legal, and 52 percent fall in between those positions—percentages that essentially have remained the same since the pivotal Roe v. Wade decision three decades ago. According to a Think Progress poll, nearly two out of every three registered voters in Texas said there are enough abortion laws on the books, and eight out of 10 opposed lawmakers considering abortion-related legislation during special sessions.
The Texas Legislature passed House Bill 15 in 2011, requiring women to have an ultrasound by a physician at least 24 hours before a scheduled abortion. According to a survey of 318 women by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, the law has not led women to change their minds about having abortions. Those results were reported in an opinion piece by Daniel Grossman in the Austin American-Statesman on June 22.
The restrictions on providers are examples of what Baruch College professor Theodore Joyce calls supply-side anti-abortion tactics. In a 2011 New England Journal of Medicine analysis, he pointed out “demand-side” policies, such as the 24-hour waiting period, have been largely ineffective. However, the 2004 Woman’s Right to Know Act in Texas had a dramatic impact when it required all abortions at or after 16 weeks of pregnancy to be performed in a hospital or an ambulatory surgical center. The number of abortions at or after 16 weeks dropped by 88 percent from 2003 to 2004 while the number of women who left the state to have procedures for late abortions almost quadrupled.
Steve Jacob is founding editor of D Healthcare Daily and author of the book Health Care in 2020: Where Uncertain Reform, Bad Habits, Too Few Doctors and Skyrocketing Costs Are Taking Us. He can be reached at [email protected].
