[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website] on Tuesday upheld [opinion, PDF] some of the strictest parts of a Texas abortion law, which could cause the majority of the state’s abortion clinics to close, leaving only seven open. The decision allows the state to require abortion clinics to satisfy hospital-level operating standards, which include minimum room size and staffing levels. Unless the US Supreme Court [official website] agrees to stop the decision, Texas can begin to enforce the restrictions in roughly three weeks. Traditional abortion clinic owners say the millions of dollars in upgrades would cause many of them to close down. The three-judge panel noted that New Mexico abortion clinics are located just across the Texas border and the clinic owners in Texas failed to show that a “large fraction” of women would suffer as a result of the closings.

Abortion [JURIST archive] related issues have been a heated topic of discussion for the past several years in the US. Earlier this month the North Carolina legislature gave final approval [JURIST report] to the Women and Children’s Protection Act of 2015, which mandates a 72-hour waiting period for abortions after a woman has been informed of her options and the risks of the procedure, except in the case of a medical emergency. In May the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] struck down [JURIST report] two parts of Idaho abortion laws-one which banned all abortions after 20 weeks, and the other which required that women seeking abortions in their second trimester do so in a hospital. Also in May Tennessee adopted a law [JURIST report] that requires 48-hour waiting periods for women seeking an abortion. In April Alabama state representative Teri Collins proposed a bill to ban abortion [JURIST report] once a fetal heartbeat has been detected.