Texas women turned away at abortion clinics after court ruling [View all]

[cali]

Women seeking to terminate their pregnancies were turned away at clinics across Texas on Friday, providers said, after strict new regulations for physicians who perform abortions prompted a dozen facilities to stop offering them.

Facilities that continue to perform abortions were flooded with calls from women trying to find alternatives, clinic officials said.

"They're calling from all over - Fort Worth, West Texas, all over Dallas, Oklahoma, everywhere," said Betty Pettigrew, director at Routh Street Women's Clinic in downtown Dallas, which has offered abortion services since 1978.

Offices were inundated with calls after a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that a provision of a new Texas law that requires all doctors performing abortions to have an agreement with a local hospital to admit patients could go into immediate effect.

The provision was part of a sweeping anti-abortion law, passed in July by the Republican-led Texas Legislature, that also requires abortion clinics to meet heightened building standards, bans abortion after 20 weeks and requires strict adherence to federal guidelines in prescribing the so-called abortion pill.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/01/us-usa-abortion-texas-idUSBRE9A013720131101