House Bill 2 and Senate Bill 1 — the omnibus abortion legislation filed in the second special legislative session — have been labeled as among the strictest abortion regulations in the country.
The bills would ban abortion starting 20 weeks after fertilization, under a provision stating that Texas has a compelling interest in protecting fetuses from pain; require doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility; force doctors to administer the abortion-inducing drug RU-486 in person, rather than allowing the woman to take it at home; and require abortions — even drug-induced ones — to be performed in ambulatory surgical centers.
This interactive shows which of the state's 42 abortion facilities already meet the ambulatory surgical center requirement (yellow) and which do not (blue). The table below shows how these additional restrictions on abortions in Texas compare with restrictions in other states, based on information collected by the Guttmacher Institute, an advocacy and research organization that promotes abortion rights but produces data that is cited by advocates on both sides of the issue.
State | Type of Ban | Law Status | Facility Regulations | Hospital Distance | Provider Requirements |
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Though most physicians calculate the stage of a woman's pregnancy based on her last menstrual period, HB 2 and SB 1 would do it post-fertilization — a difference of two weeks.
California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming allow abortions until a doctor determines the fetus is viable. Though that date can vary, the point of viability typically falls around 26 weeks after the last menstrual period — 24 weeks after fertilization. For comparison purposes, those states are labeled as allowing abortions up to that point. North Dakota will allow abortions up to the point of viability until a new six-week ban takes effect Aug. 1.
HB 2 and SB 1 would also require abortion facilities in Texas to meet state ambulatory surgical center standards, but the stringency of those standards can vary from state to state. Texas’ standards fall on the stricter side, said Elizabeth Nash, a policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute.
This story was produced in partnership with Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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Comments (10)
bob bobert
Ohhh man I can't wait to here the arguments over this one
Amy Drosche
Very helpful chart, but what about a column for the other requirements....the vaginal ultrasound required 24 hours prior to abortion? It would help to see all measures stacked up.
Excellent article:
http://prospect.org/article/where-was-outrage-over-texass-sonogram-law
Amy Drosche
In response to Donald Baker, that was a murderer. Would you suggest shutting down the Catholic church in order to save young boys?
Evelyn Peelle
I suggest adding "PROPOSED" clarifications to the Texas sections of the table to differentiate the proposed-but-not-yet-law provisions from those that are already law in other states. Such a change in the Facility Regulation and Provider Requirement columns would be clearer and accurate. The "Current" qualification in the Type of Ban column is helpful but could be misinterpreted to mean that all the provisions listed for Texas are current law.
Thank you for the ongoing press coverage of this issue.
Snexas Snexas
Would it be possible for the TX Tribune to create a map of this overlayed with a map of Texas hospitals. These bills require the clinics to have admitting privileges in hospitals, but I read recently that over half of TX counties are rural. 44 TX counties have NO hospital. 68 of them only have one hospital. Hospitals are not required by law to give a doctor admitting privileges. These bills will be really bad for poor, rural women, especially the ones that have no hospital in their county.
Snexas Snexas
Would it be possible for the TX Tribune to create a map of this overlayed with a map of Texas hospitals? These bills require the clinics to have admitting privileges in hospitals, but I read recently that over half of TX counties are rural. 44 TX counties have NO hospital. 68 of them only have one hospital. Hospitals are not required by law to give a doctor admitting privileges. These bills will be really bad for poor, rural women, especially the ones that have no hospital in their county.
Mike Wong
So much noise over not what turn out to be not very substantive changes compared to other states.
1) 29 states require the ASC level facilities, including liberal states such as Illinois and California
2) Hospital requirement is not a big deal as every blue dot is in an area with a hospital. Hospital admitting rights is just a matter of coordination with a local facility.
3) Fact is the the poor rural complaint is just not real - there are no abortion facilities in any of those areas at this time anyways - so no net change there.
4) currently Texas has a limit of 28 weeks - which turns out to be actually the most lenient state in that regard. And since the new limit of 20 weeks post fertilization = 22 weeks after menstrual cycle what we are arguing over is really a couple of weeks as some liberal states (NY, MA, RI) are at 24 weeks.
5) I was born in 1970 at 27 weeks, have a close friend whose son is now 5 YO with no problems except reduced sight (all A student, plays soccer well) that was born at 23 weeks.
So what seems to be the argument is about when true viability occurs, or a case of one to two weeks at the bottom end - every state seems to agree that viability occurs at some point - the most popular seems to be at 26 weeks - and restricts abortion to that point. Which is probably close to the medicine's capability at the time the law was written.
Sweet Crabby
No one is in favor of abortion. No one. The proposed legislation will place restrictions on women's health clinics that do not apply to other types of clinics in this state. What about the erectile dysfunction, vasectomy, dental surgery, and cosmetic surgery clinics that advertise on billboards up and down our highways? They aren't ambulatory surgery centers, because they don't need to be. According to medical organizations, the type of care provided by Planned Parenthood does not require ambulatory surgical clinic equipment. Why then, if the legislature is so concerned about our health, does this bill not address the dental surgery clinics that we all send our kids to if their wisdom teeth need to be removed? Why don't men need to bring a note from their wife and undergo a stress test before being given Viagra or Cialis? It would make sense; those drugs affect blood pressure, after all. Why is this legislature ramming this bill through despite medical advice, and without adequate hearings? What else is going on -- do we need to follow the money to find out what group plans to build clinics to take the place of Planned Parenthood, but at a hefty profit? I have my suspicions about that.
Thomas Malthus
I like to review mathematics, and how it is interpreted in modern public discourse.
Referring to the arithmetic I see in my King James Bible:
Yahweh orders the late term abortion of Abraham's son
in the 1,040th week, much past the 20 week timeframe.
That's okay, for modern Christians.
Pontius Pilate orders the capital punishment of Jesus,
with the event showing the error of this punitive act.
That's okay, for modern Christians.
The interpretation of these events by some modern humans, who base
their beliefs on the presentation of these acts in a literary work:
Abortion is against the will of God.
Capital punishment is for the greater good.
In the words of Mr. Show, " Life is precious, and God, and the Bible."
Gary Porter
This is an excellent example of journalism that tells the truth but not the whole truth, which has been the pattern for media coverage regarding abortion. It would take a much bigger chart than this to list all the state-by-state restrictions and proposed restrictions on abortion. In 2012 there were 300 bills restricting abortions introduced to state legislatures across the country, facility regulations and provider requirements being among the more innocuous. A chart like this, which contains only a sliver of the whole story, does so much more harm than good. I'd rather it hadn't run at all.
The spread of misinformation is insidious--this chart makes no mention of the practical effect of these laws and regulations. It doesn't take note that the result of Mississippi's legislation is that there is now a total of one abortion provider in the entire state. It doesn't tell us that in Ohio, abortion along with preventative birth control has been completely defunded and is out of reach for low-income women.
I'd like, just once, for someone to point out that the agenda behind these proposals and the politicians who vote in favor of them is not better, safer healthcare. To the contrary, it's a mean-spirited attack on women's rights and the poor. Their intent is to enforce a fundamentalist interpretation of morality on the country as a whole. They know they don't have enough power to completely overthrow Roe vs. Wade, but they can certainly chink away at it till legal abortions are regulated out of existence. And they don't intend to stop with abortion. Very rarely is it mentioned that the next item on the agenda is to ban preventative birth control altogether. And they're not stopping at Texas, either.