PRINTER-FRIENDLY Texas: All But 8 Abortion Clinics Close After Court Guts Access Overnight A federal appeals court has allowed Texas to begin immediately enforcing a sweeping anti-choice law, effectively gutting access to abortion overnight. Thirteen of the state’s remaining abortion clinics have been forced to close, leaving Texas, the second largest state, with just eight abortion facilities, all of them in four metropolitan areas. Nearly a million Texas women will now have to travel a minimum of 300 miles round-trip to access abortion. The provision, which went into effect following Thursday’s court ruling, requires all abortion clinics to meet hospital-style building requirements, reversing the order of a lower-court judge who found the restrictions posed an undue burden to women. The lower-court judge had also allowed two clinics in Texas’s isolated Rio Grande Valley to reopen after they — and many other facilities in the state — were forced to close under a separate provision requiring hospital admitting privileges. But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals also reversed that decision, shuttering the two clinics and leaving no abortion facilities west or south of San Antonio. The Rio Grande Valley is home to many undocumented immigrants who can’t travel north due to border checkpoints, and are effectively cut off from legal abortion. In a statement, the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is fighting the law in court, said, "All Texas women have been relegated today to a second class of citizens." A DAILY INDEPENDENT GLOBAL NEWS HOUR with Amy Goodman & Juan González