Judge tosses out Texas abortion rules

AUSTIN, Texas -- Tough new Texas abortion restrictions are on hold after a federal judge found Republican-led efforts to hold abortion clinics to hospital-level operating standards unconstitutional in a ruling that spares more than a dozen clinics from imminent closure.

The state vowed to quickly appeal Friday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel in Austin, who cited other rules GOP lawmakers have recently passed in his decision to throw out requirements that clinics meet hospital operating standards.

Those prior abortion restrictions include mandatory sonograms and a 24-hour waiting period after a woman first seeks an abortion.

"These substantial obstacles have reached a tipping point," Yeakel wrote in a 21-page opinion.

Yeakel sided with clinics that sued over one of the most disputed measures of a sweeping anti-abortion bill signed by Republican Gov. Rick Perry in 2013. The ruling stops new clinic requirements that would have left seven abortion facilities in Texas come Monday, when the law was set to take effect.

Texas has 19 abortion providers -- down from more than 40 just two years ago, according to groups that sued the state for the second time over the law known as HB2.

The ruling blocks a portion of the that law would have required abortion facilities in Texas to have operating rooms, air filtration systems and other costly additions that typically are mandated only in surgical settings.

"I am truly disappointed in today's ruling that undermines a concerted effort to improve health care for women in Texas by raising the standard of care in abortion clinics," Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said.

Yeakel, however, concluded the intent was only to "close existing licensed abortion clinics."

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican who is favored to become governor next year, said he would seek an appeal to try to preserve the new rules.

Clinics called the measures a backdoor effort to outlaw abortion, which has been a constitutional right since the Roe v. Wade ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973.

Under the new restrictions, the only remaining abortion facilities in Texas would have been in major cities, and there would have been none in the western half of the nation's second-largest state. For women in El Paso, the closest abortion provider would be in New Mexico.

"The evidence has been stacking up against the state and against the politicians who so cynically passed these laws in the name of safety," said Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman's Health, which would have been among the clinic operators affected.

Miller said that she will now seek to reopen a clinic in the Rio Grande Valley as soon as the weekend. The clinic closed in March, leaving the nearest abortion provider more than 200 miles away in San Antonio.

Some clinics in Texas already stopped offering abortions after another part of the 2013 bill required doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. That part of the law has been upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court in New Orleans, where the state will now seek a second reversal.

"The State disagrees with the court's ruling and will seek immediate relief from the Fifth Circuit, which has already upheld HB2 once," Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean said.

Similar rules on admitting privileges have been blocked by federal courts in Mississippi, Kansas and Wisconsin.

Attorneys for the state denied that women would be burdened by fewer abortion facilities, saying nearly 9 in 10 women in Texas would still live within 150 miles of a provider. Critics say that still leaves nearly a million Texas women embarking on drives longer than three hours to get an abortion.

Opposition to the Texas law was so visible that Democrat Wendy Davis launched her campaign for governor behind the celebrity she achieved through a nearly 13-hour filibuster last summer that temporarily blocked the bill in the state Senate.

Her opponent in November is Abbott.

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