On July 18, 2013, the then-governor of Texas, Rick Perry, signed House Bill 2 (abbreviated HB2), an omnibus anti-abortion bill into law. The "omnibus" refers to the fact that the bill contains 4 different provisions, all of which have long been promoted by the pro-life movement. The provisions of the law are as follows:
1. Abortion after 20 weeks is now illegal.
2. Abortion clinics to meet the same building standards as ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), even if they do not provide surgical abortions.
3. Doctors who perform abortions must have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of the clinic where they perform them.
Now it's clearly medically unnecessary to make abortions illegal after 20 weeks, so the only reason for this would be to "protect the lives of the unborn" rather than the health of women. But regarding the second two provisions, some argument, superficial though it may be, can be and has been made for how these laws benefit/protect women's health.
First, let's look at the ASC issue. What is an ASC? According to NPR, "Such facilities are mini-hospitals, with wide corridors, large operating rooms and advanced HVAC systems, among other requirements." On the surface it seems fair to make abortion clinics conform to higher safety standards, especially when you read on right-wing websites that such standards "ensure that these facilities have a sterile environment and proper sanitation; an adequate number of trained and qualified staffers; and the ability to address medical emergencies, emergency access, and basic fire prevention and safety." Similarly, Texas Solicitor General Ken Paxton has claimed that these laws are necessary for "ensuring that EMTs can have access to the facilities" and that "there's not a maze of hallways." However, the fact remains that abortion is exceptionally safe already: with a mortality rate of <1/100,000 abortions, it's safer than almost any other medical procedure, including plastic surgery. Also, as the AMA and ACOG pointed out in their amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court, "Abortion procedures do not require the full operating theater or external sterility precautions that are mandated by H.B. 2," (page 11) and the ACOG has noted that this law sets a higher standard than for other procedures with higher risk, like colonoscopy. Similarly, the AMA/ACOG brief noted that "no law
requires colonoscopies or liposuction to be performed in
an ASC or hospital setting, despite the fact that the
mortality rate for both procedures is higher than for
abortion," which undermines the argument made by proponents of the law that it requires abortion clinics to meet "the same minimum cleanliness and safety standards as other outpatient surgery facilities." (page 15)
So now that it's been established that this law is unnecessary and won't provide any benefits, we must then ask what, if any, the downsides of it are or will be. The most obvious comes from the closure of clinics that will be caused by these laws, as well as, of course, the ones that the law has already forced to close.
Some have argued that this law didn't cause the closure of the 22 clinics that are no longer open in Texas that were open before the law was passed, or that even if it did, it was the requirement for medication abortions that did it, not the admitting privileges or ASC requirements. Yet, as Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has pointed out, the trends in the number of clinics open after the law took effect and then was suspended is exactly what we would expect if the law caused clinic closures. In her words: “It’s almost like the perfect controlled experiment as to the effect of the law, isn’t it? It’s like you put the law into effect, 12 clinics closed. You take the law out of effect, they reopen.” Also worth noting is that according to NPR, the law would close at least 10 of the 19 remaining clinics in the state if it is upheld by SCOTUS. This makes sense not just because many abortion doctors can't get admitting privileges, but also because building/buying an ASC to comply with that provision of the law would cost millions of dollars for a clinic to do.
So what? Perhaps the closure of these clinics will still not place an undue burden on women seeking abortions in Texas. This is the argument that has been advanced by the state in the SCOTUS case about this law: according to NBC News, they have argued that "More than 90 percent of women of reproductive age live within 150 miles" of one of the clinics that would remain open if the law went into effect completely. This claim originates from Todd Giberson, a geographer who testified in defense of the state and HB2. Yet his analysis has been criticized because, according to Mary Tuma, it "did not take into account women who would be unable to secure access to a car (such as poor women along the U.S.-Mexico border), and included a facility in New Mexico as a clinic within reach for those residing in El Paso." Also, the problem with including a clinic in New Mexico is that, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg has pointed out, New Mexico doesn't require abortion clinics to meet ASC standards or for abortionists to have admitting privileges.
Lastly, the state argues that its law would have prevented incidents like that of Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted of multiple charges related to exploiting pregnant women who wanted abortions (charges that included murder and involuntary manslaughter) in 2013. Yet this argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny, because, for one thing, as has been pointed out at Slate's Double X blog, "the story of Kermit Gosnell is not one of under-regulation, but rather of government failing to enforce already-existing laws that were more than sufficient to shut him down."
In short, the answer to the question posed in the title of post is no.
