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Two more Texas abortion facilities will stop performing abortions thanks to tighter regulations designed to protect women's health – and one will close its doors for good.

A troubled El Paso abortion facility, Hilltop Women's Reproductive Center, remained open illegally two days after it should have stopped offering abortions, due to an error on the state's part.

Some 13 Texas abortion facilities closed after a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the state to enforce the terms of H.B. 2 in a ruling handed down last Thursday. Under the law, abortion providers must have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles and must meet the same health and safety standards as other ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs). But the court allowed an exception for another El Paso abortion facility, Reproductive Services.

“There was miscommunication on our part Friday that led [Hilltop personnel] to believe they were exempt,” the Texas Department of State Health Services said through a spokesman.

As a result, Hilltop did not cease performing abortions until after the close of business on Saturday.

Its closure means there is not a single abortion facility in the state of Texas west of San Antonio.

At the same time, a Planned Parenthood office in Waco that has been open 20 years, has surrendered its license to perform abortions. The Audre Rapoport Women's Health Center on Columbus Avenue, which performed abortions, merged with the Mary Ruth Duncan Women's Health Center at 1121 Ross Avenue a few years ago.

It will no longer be able to perform abortions – ending abortion in the city of Waco.

However, the Ross Avenue office will remain open, providing the morning after pill.

“I’m elated,” John Pisciotta, Baylor alumnus and director of Pro-Life Waco, told the Baylor Lariat. “They began their abortion business in 1994 and we have been demonstrating, praying and working to bring an end to what we think is a Holocaust for 20 years.”

In a press release, Pisciotta said that over the last two decades the Waco facility had taken the lives of “nearly 19,000 preborn babies” through abortion.

“Today begins a new era in Texas,” said Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life.

The state has gone from having more than 40 abortion facilities before the passage of H.B. 2 last July to just seven abortion facilities that meet ASC requirements. All seven offices are located in the cities of Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio.

“The pro-life movement can now focus our lifesaving efforts of prayer and sidewalk counseling at seven rather than dozens of locations,” Pojman said. “And abortions at ASCs are less likely to be performed in a manner that endangers the health and safety of women. All of these are important to the pro-life movement, which cares for mothers and babies.”

Hilltop's history shows the need for that concern. The state slapped Hilltop with a $5,350.00 administrative penalty in 2007 for failing to monitor infection control and/or address post-procedure infections and not abiding by the state's parental notification and consent laws when performing abortions on minor girls.

Still, the remaining abortion facilities will be able to perform a massive number of abortions, pro-life advocates warn.

“These monsters collectively have enormous capacity to perform tens of thousands of abortions annually, probably more than ample for the 68,000 annual abortions in Texas,” Pojman said. “Abby Johnson, the former director of the now-closed Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Bryan, has said Planned Parenthood’s abortion ASC in Houston was designed to perform 75 abortions a day, six days a week. That corresponds to a frightening 23,400 abortions a year.”

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Sidewalk counselors remain vigilant, but they are celebrating the victories as they come.

“I don’t think this is the end of abortion for mothers that live here, and I believe there will still be abortion,” Pisciotta said. “But there won’t be in Waco anymore.”