Breaking: Texas Doesn’t Give A Sh*t About Women, Will Block Almost All Access To Abortion

Thanks to a ruling yesterday by the U.S Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, if you are looking to get an abortion and live in Texas, you’re pretty much screwed. Effective immediately, all but seven abortion clinics in the state are closed.

Texas made headlines over abortion laws back in August when Wendy Davis stood for over 13 hours in a epic filibuster to draw attention to the ridiculous abortion restrictions Texas was trying to pass. At the time, I cheered right along with the non-douche members of the country, but apparently we celebrated too soon.

In case you can’t keep up with the “it’s illegal/no wait, now it’s legal” Texas abortion law tennis match, here’s a quick breakdown of what happened and where we are now:

In 2013, Texas’ abortion law had two highly contentious parts- the first part would require doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, the second would require any clinic that performs abortions to have hospital level upgrades.

The admitting privileges requirement has already been upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court, so while that caused some clinics to close, others remained open throughout the state- until yesterday.

As to the second part of the law, back in August, awesome district Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that requiring Texas clinics to spend millions of dollars on hospital-level upgrades was less about safety and more about making access to abortion difficult, so that requirement was thrown out. The state appealed. The appeal is still ongoing, but yesterday Texas won the right to undo Judge Yeakel’s ruling and enforce the law while the appeal is pending.

All of the seven remaining abortion clinics are located around cities in the Houston, Austin, San Antonio and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas. If you live along the Mexican border or in rural Texas, you better have reliable transportation and money for travel, because the closest clinic could be 300 miles away.

Whether or not you would personally choose an abortion, everyone who values the legal system in America should be pissed about this decision. Roe v. Wade granted women the right to abortions, plain and simple. These backdoor efforts to deny women that right and claim it’s for our own safety are a despicable use of our justice system.

(Photo: Shutterstock)