Tracking Texas Abortion Access

After Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed HB 2, the state’s omnibus anti-abortion bill, into law in the summer of 2013, abortion providers in the state rapidly began closing due to the law’s medically unnecessary provisions, which require abortion-providing doctors to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals and severely restrict doctors’ ability to prescribe medication abortion. The law also bans abortion after 20 weeks and mandates that, come September 2014, all abortion providers meet the standards of an ambulatory surgical center.

Use this map to track the closure of Texas abortion providers, which are increasingly located only in major cities along interstate highway corridors, leaving rural Texans without the safe, legal abortion care they’d been able to access since Roe v. Wade.

As of March 6, 2014, there are 25 open abortion clinics, six of which are ambulatory surgical centers, in Texas.

As of April 11, 2014, there are 24 open abortion clinics, six of which are ASCs.

As of June 10, 2014, there are 23 open abortion facilities, six of which are ASCs, due to the retirement of the lone abortion provider in Corpus Christi. Legal abortion care has ended entirely between the U.S.-Mexico border and San Antonio.

As of July 31, 2014, there are 19 facilities providing legal abortion care in Texas, five of which are ambulatory surgical centers.

As of October 3, 2014, there are eight facilities, all ambulatory surgical centers, providing legal abortion care in Texas, after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state can begin enforcing the ambulatory surgical center and admitting privileges provisions of HB 2.

As of October 15, 2014, Texas has 16 legal abortion providers, after the Supreme Court blocked an earlier Fifth Circuit ruling that had allowed Texas to fully enforce HB 2. Clinics across the state now need not operate as ambulatory surgical centers, though doctors who provide abortions everywhere but Whole Woman’s McAllen and Reproductive Services in El Paso (which has closed its doors entirely, despite the ruling) must have admitting privileges at local hospitals.

As of June 9, 2015, the day the Fifth Circuit upheld the most stringent requirements of HB 2, mandating that abortion providers operate as ambulatory surgical centers, Texas had 18 legal abortion providers, eight of which were licensed ambulatory surgical centers. A ninth ambulatory surgical center, operated by Planned Parenthood in San Antonio, is scheduled to open in fall 2015. Texas abortion providers have petitioned the Fifth Circuit to block their decision—asking them to rule by June 19—while the providers seek relief from the Supreme Court.

Map last updated June 15, 2016.

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