The Supreme Court of the United States' decision regarding abortion will affect over 266,000 childbearing women in Texas, which will take effect in June. These are composed of Pacific Islander and Asian-American women.
The Whole Woman's Health is disputing HB-2, a law that could shut down almost all abortion clinics in the state. This will be the first abortion case that the Supreme Court will be ruling on in more than 20 years, NBC News reported.
"The impact for our community is huge," Miriam Yeung, executive director of the National Asian Pacific Women's Forum (NAPAWF), told NBC News. "One out of 20 women of reproductive age in Texas are AAPI."
HB-2 is a Texas passed law in 2013 increases the regulations on abortion clinics, requires the clinics to have admitting privileges at hospitals nearby and had the clinics render as an ambulatory outpatient surgical centers.
The law had shut down almost 50 percent of abortion clinics in Texas when its first requirement took effect. The second requirement is to meet the standards of outpatient surgical centers. Once this requirement took effect, only 10 clinics will remain accessible to the state's 5.4 million women of childbearing age.
The arguments that are focusing on whether or not the law imposes an "undue burden" on a woman's right to have an abortion has been presented to the Supreme Court.
"The effect is physically making it more challenging to access abortion," Yeung said. "It is going to impact our community, which already has a hard enough time accessing healthcare that is linguistically and culturally competent."
Meanwhile, the number of abortion in Texas has dropped to 54, 191 in 2014 from 63, 168 in 2013. A reported 681 Texan women had their abortion outside the state, as reported by Breitbart.
"First off, this news is something to celebrate. Almost 9,000 fewer Texans were victimized by the injustice of elective abortion in 2014 than in 2013," John Seago, the legislative director of Texas Right to Life told Breitbart Texas.
