Will the clinics stay open in Texas?

TEXAS ANTI-abortion legislation that caused an eruption of protest in June 2013 is being challenged in federal court--but even if a judge's ruling to strike down two provisions of the law is upheld, a lot of damage has already been done.

Despite huge demonstrations a year ago, including protests inside the state Capitol itself, Republicans forced through House Bill 2 (HB2), which included a host of restrictions on clinics that provide abortions. The net effect, said the bill's opponents, would be to close 40 clinics, leaving just five in the whole state of Texas. Since then, several provisions of the bill have been challenged in the courts, but dozens of clinics have closed.

On August 29, a federal judge in Austin, Texas, struck down two provisions--one that required all abortion clinics in the state to meet the same building, equipment and staffing standards as hospital-style surgical centers, and another requiring clinic personnel to have hospital admitting privileges. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel wrote in her decision that these provisions put an unconstitutional burden on women, causing clinic closings that would force many Texas women to drive more than 150 miles to obtain an abortion.

Any day now, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to issue a decision on whether to block Yeakel's ruling and allow the restrictions to go into effect while further appeals are heard. 5th Circuit is one of the most conservative federal appellate courts in the country--last year, it reversed a ruling by Yeakel striking down another provision of the anti-abortion law.

Meanwhile, Texas is seeing the results of HB2--dozens of clinics have shut down because of the provision requiring hospital admitting privileges, which is widely viewed as a red herring, since many abortion doctors have never had to admit anyone to the emergency room in the entire history of their practices.

With more than half of Texas clinics providing clinics already closed, the caseloads at those still open have risen dramatically. At a clinic in Fort Worth, for example, a doctor from New England flies down once a week to perform about 100 abortions over the course of a weekend.

This volume of cases doesn't make for a good experience for the clients or the doctor. But as everyone knows, Texas' new abortion law isn't about women's health, but controlling their bodies. If the appeals court overturns Yeakel's ruling, Texas could have just five clinics left.

TO UNDERSTAND the history of reproductive restrictions in Texas, one must look before Roe v. Wade--the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

The first series of abortion-related laws in Texas were passed in 1851--they basically outlawed the practice and provided penalties for doctors who performed abortions. Around the same time, midwives were being pushed out of their practices and marginalized--they were replaced by gynecologists, who was almost always male, unlike midwives.

The Texas anti-abortion statute remained almost unchanged until it was overturned by Roe in 1973--a case, it's important to mention, that came out of Dallas, with a young attorney who recently passed the bar exam, Sarah Weddington, arguing the case through to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Roe opened access to abortion for most women in the U.S. The ruling was the result of struggle--of women and men organizing and protesting for equal rights, including reproductive justice, during the late 1960s, which changed hearts and minds and threw into question women's second-class status in U.S. society.

The abortion rights movement didn't happen in a vacuum. At the same time, social unrest had erupted on a multitude of issues, including the civil rights and Black Power movements, the anti-Vietnam War movement and an increase in working-class struggles, especially in public-sector jobs like nursing and teaching, where women were more likely to be employed.

Eight years before Roe, the Supreme Court ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut removed restrictions on birth control for all married women, and the 1972 decision in Eisenstadt v. Baird extended this right to women regardless of their martial status. Abortion rights were won in California in 1967 (signed into law by then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan) and in New York in 1970 (under then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and a Republican-controlled state House and Senate).

It wasn't just these court cases but a movement that existed around the U.S. that won women the right to choose abortion--a fact that should guide our fightback today.

Meanwhile, the strategy of relying on liberal politicians and organizations to defend reproductive justice in the U.S. has failed women.

Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis gained national renown for leading an 11th-hour filibuster of the Republicans' anti-abortion bill, which rallied spirits during the 2013 fight. But she has proven unable and unwilling to build support for ongoing activism, instead focusing attention on her campaign for governor. When she declared her support for a ban on abortion after 20 weeks, many activists rightly questioned whether her political ambitions were more important to her than her pro-choice politics.

Ever since Roe v. Wade, the Democrats have allowed the right wing to carve out more and more restrictions on abortion rights, even while they claimed to be defending the right to choose--starting in 1976, while the Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate, the Hyde Amendment, prohibiting the use of Medicaid funds for abortions for poor women, passed Congress and was signed into law.

If the strategy of mainstream pro-choice groups is depending on the Democrats, and this is the best we can get from them, then the right will continue to be successful at whittling away the right to choose.

We need an abortion rights movement that holds politicians accountable regardless of party affiliation, one that doesn't shy away from controversial topics such as abortion rights for minors and Medicaid funding of abortions. For far too long, the right has been allowed to push the debate to the right. Measures that were previously off the table are under consideration now, such as getting rid of exceptions for cases of rape and the health of the women in the bans on late-term abortions.

Abortion rights activists need to push the debate to the left instead of meeting the right wing in the middle. We need a movement that challenges any new restrictions to reproductive rights and seeks to repeal the restrictions that are already on the books.