Texas Passed A Harsh Anti-Abortion Law. Now, We Have Proof It’s Hurting Women.

Thanks to a harsh state law, the wait time for women to get an abortion in Texas is becoming dangerously long — and a pending court decision could make it even worse.

A new report released by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project — a research group based at the University of Texas at Austin that’s been tracking the state’s reproductive health policy over the past four years — finds that recent clinic shutdowns have greatly limited access to timely abortions statewide. In some cases, women had to wait nearly a month to be seen. In others, clinics had to turn women away, since they had no available appointment slots open.

As wait time to get an abortion increases, the estimated proportion of abortions performed in the second trimester increases. These later surgical abortions, although safe, are associated with a higher risk of complications and are significantly more costly to women than an earlier medical abortion. And even staunch abortion opponents are more opposed to late-term abortions compared to earlier procedures, citing the scientifically disputed theory that fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks gestation.

The researchers behind the new study have been collecting data since the initial passage of the 2013 law, known as HB2, considered among the harshest anti-abortion measures in the country. HB2 imposes harsh restrictions on abortion clinics and providers under the guise of improving patient safety. Since it was approved, the number of abortion clinics in Texas have dropped from 48 to 18. Now, there are only nine surgical centers left in Texas that are able to perform later abortions.

“It was so frustrating to hear legislators behind these bills saying things completely not based on fact,” said Daniel Grossman, a lead researcher and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of California, San Francisco. “We saw, on the ground, how women were affected by these laws, and knew it was important to document.”

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http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/10/06/3709636/abortion-wait-time-texas/