Texas clinics resume abortions as state suggests ban is over with new executive order
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the state’s legal filing.
Texas’ ban on most abortion procedures amid the coronavirus’ outbreak appears to have ended Wednesday. Clinics across the state resumed services and attorneys for the state acknowledged that doing so would not be in conflict with Gov. Greg Abbott’s new executive order that permitted some elective procedures to recommence.
At 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, Abbott’s new executive order went into effect, allowing elective medical procedures to resume in healthcare facilities that agree to reserve hospital capacity for COVID-19 patients and to not request supplies of personal protective equipment from public sources.
The order lasts through May 8 and replaced Abbott’s previous executive order that suspended elective surgeries and procedures that weren’t necessary to correct a serious medical condition or to preserve the life of a patient — including most abortions. The state’s ban on most abortion procedures amid the pandemic has been the focus of a back-and-forth legal battle between abortion providers and the state.
At a press conference announcing the relaxed restrictions last week, Abbott said abortion procedures are “not part of this order” and that it would ultimately “be a decision for courts to make.”
However, Dyana Limon-Mercado, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, said in a statement Wednesday that Planned Parenthood believes the exception in the new order means that abortion providers, like other facilities, may resume services.
And attorneys for the state did not challenge abortion providers’ interpretation. In a legal filing in a U.S. District Court Wednesday night, state attorneys said that because abortion providers had certified in writing to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission that they qualified for the exemption, that “neither HHSC nor (the Texas Medical Board) will take any unilateral enforcement action against them.”
Kayleigh Date, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s office, wrote in an email Wednesday afternoon that the new executive order applies to all licensed health care facilities, and that there is no specific exemption for abortion providers.
Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health and Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, said in a statement Wednesday that its clinics in Fort Worth, Austin and McAllen are all open and “once again offering all abortion-care options to patients,” including both medication and surgical abortions.
When reached Wednesday afternoon, a representative at Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas’ main call center line confirmed that clinics were resuming scheduling appointments for all abortion services.
“The past month has been an unthinkable nightmare for Texans who have been forced to travel out of state just to access essential health care, if they’re able to access care at all. It’s the price of politics, which has no place in a public-health crisis,” Limon-Mercado said.
Date noted that the executive order states that failure to comply with the governor’s executive orders could result in fines up to $1,000, jail time up to 180 days or both.
Abbott previously said his original order banning elective medical procedures was intended to increase hospital capacity and conserve personal protective equipment to combat spread of the novel coronavirus. A day after it was issued in March, Attorney General Ken Paxton clarified that abortion providers were not exempt from the order and said only abortion procedures essential for the mother’s health would be permitted.
While anti-abortion groups celebrated Paxton’s interpretation, abortion providers represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Lawyering Project, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America quickly followed two days later with a federal lawsuit against Texas officials in an effort to stop the state’s ban.
Aspects of the ban have been repeatedly reinstated and reversed as it’s gone back and forth between a federal district court in Austin and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In the wake of Abbott’s executive order, abortion providers have canceled hundreds of procedures, and some Texans have reported traveling out of the state in order to obtain abortions.
This story was originally published April 22, 2020 at 3:24 PM with the headline "Texas clinics resume abortions as state suggests ban is over with new executive order."
