Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt: Quantifying The Case’s Potential Impact On Abortion Access And Women’s Health

Editor’s note: The post below discusses Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which will be argued before the Supreme Court tomorrow. The Court today decided another important health-related case, holding in Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. that ERISA prevented Vermont from requiring self-insured employee health plans to report claims information and other data to the state’s all-payer claims database. Read Bill Sage’s recent Health Affairs Blog post for a discussion of the issues at stake in Gobeille. In April 2013, there were 41 facilities providing abortion services in Texas, and now there are 18. Depending on what the US Supreme Court decides in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, there could be as few as nine or 10 facilities left in the state. Regardless of one’s views on abortion, one ought, at the very least, to be curious about the effect of this shift on women and families in Texas. In the summer of 2013, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 2 (HB2), one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. Among the provisions included in the law is a requirement that physicians performing abortions must obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility. That can be quite difficult, according to Texas providers we have interviewed. Sometimes the hospital never responds to a request for the privileging application. Sometimes the hospital requires gynecologists to submit a case log of recent surgeries, bu...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured Health Professionals Hospitals Population Health Public Health Abortion HB2 Reproductive Health Supreme Court Texas Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt Women's Health Source Type: blogs