Abortion providers and abortion rights advocates say the law will disproportionately impact low-income patients who already often struggle to access health care. The average distance a Texas patient will have to travel to obtain an abortion will now rise from 12 to 248 miles, a 20-fold increase, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
Abortion clinics in the state say they plan to comply with the law, but providers often operate on thin margins and these changes could force many to close their doors. They can now only provide abortions for people up to six weeks of pregnancy, which will dramatically limit their services and patient volume. Abortion funds, which help patients afford and otherwise access the procedure, could also face prosecution under the law, so may have to limit their work helping patients pay clinics.
Clinics also need to hire lawyers to defend their physicians, nurses and other staff members from the lawsuits they expect to face. If they lose a lawsuit, they not only have to pay damages and their opponent’s legal fees, but the state can shut the clinic down. And if they win, the law prevents clinics and others accused of helping facilitate an abortion from recovering their own legal fees.
The threat of clinic closures is not theoretical in Texas. In 2013 when the state passed its HB 2 law, which required all abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals and clinics to be equipped with hospital-level surgical centers, the state lost almost half its abortion providers. Even after the Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional in 2016, few ever reopened.
https://time.com/6093905/texas-abortion-ban-abortion-rights/
= new reply since forum marked as read
