Yet another abortion facility is closing its doors in Texas due to more stringent health and safety regulations enacted last year.
The North Austin office of Whole Woman's Health, its flagship location, has become the 17th abortion business to shut its doors due to H.B. 2, according to local media.
Whole Woman's Health CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller said in a statement that the closure “of Whole Woman’s Health of Austin is the result of politicians acting against the women in our state when they passed HB 2.”
“Knowing that our facility does not meet the physical plant requirements of HB2′s ASC provision, we unfortunately had to make the difficult decision to not renew the license,” Whole Woman’s Health spokeswoman Fatimah Gifford told the Dallas News.
In order to meet the required health standards, “we basically need to take it down to the footprint and rebuild the facility.”
Thanks to provisions in the law, signed by Gov. Rick Perry last July, which require abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and demand that abortion facilities meet the same requirements as other ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), three of Whole Woman's five locations have gone out of business.
When requirements that all abortion offices meet ASC specifications go into effect in September, it may lower the number of abortion facilities in the state to as few as six.
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Miller is joining in a lawsuit to suspend that part of the law. The trial begins Monday.
Miller holds out hope that the lawsuit will allow her business to “possibly even reopen some of the Whole Woman’s Health clinics that HB forced us to close.”