The extreme anti-abortion bill that Texas Republicans will be
focused on ramming through in a second special session of the legislature would ban abortion at all but five clinics in the state thanks to a requirement that they be ambulatory surgical centers and that doctors providing abortions have admitting privileges at a local hospital.
Texas would drop from more than 40 clinics to five, located in just four of the enormous state's cities. So what would that mean for women in Texas? Well, Texas is a big state, stretching nearly 800 miles in each direction for a total of 268,581 square miles. And with abortion access restricted to four cities in the eastern half of the state:
- The closing of a clinic in El Paso means a woman from that city would have to drive 551 miles to San Antonio as a result of this bill. That's close to an eight hour drive.
- A woman in Lubbock would now have to drive 346 miles, or more than five hours, to Dallas.
- A woman in McAllen would have to go 239 miles to San Antonio, taking close to four hours each way.
- Many women in Texas already have to travel hundreds of miles and now may have to travel hundreds of miles more.
That will make it impossible for many women to obtain abortions at all, raising the cost, the time, and the aide and support required. All because of a bill a majority of Texans don't want and which is opposed by the Texas District of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Texas Hospital Association as not improving women's health care. But it's not intended to improve women's health care. It's intended to make it impossible to get a safe, legal medical procedure.