Whole Woman's Health Alliance and six nonprofits providing
abortion-related services said Texas' licensing, parental
notification, waiting period, ultrasound and other requirements
violated women's due process rights.
They said the requirements impose an undue burden on women's ability
to abort nonviable fetuses, with a disproportionate impact on the
poor, minorities and immigrants.
The complaint was filed in the federal court in Austin, Texas
against state officials including Attorney General Ken Paxton and
health services Commissioner John Hellerstedt, and seeks to block
enforcement of the challenged laws.
Marc Rylander, a spokesman for Paxton, called the challenged
requirements "common-sense measures" that protect women's lives and
reproductive health, and said the Supreme Court has upheld many
similar requirements in the past.

"It is ridiculous that these activists are so dedicated to their
radical pro-abortion agenda that they would sacrifice the health or
lives of Texas women to further it," he said.
In June 2016, the Supreme Court by a 5-3 vote struck down Texas'
requirements that doctors who perform abortions have admitting
privileges at nearby hospitals, and that abortion clinics have
costly hospital-grade facilities.
Critics said the requirements could have forced many Texas clinics
to close, especially outside major metropolitan areas.
The majority decision in Whole Woman's Health v Hellerstedt was the
court's strongest endorsement of abortion rights since its 1992
reaffirmation of the constitutional right to abortion.
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"It set a new standard of scrutiny, that states cannot pass
restrictions without proof of medical evidence and scientific facts
to justify them," Amy Hagstrom Miller, chief executive of Whole
Woman's Health, said in an interview on Thursday. "The decision gave
us leverage to look at other restrictions that Texas has long been
enforcing. We call it the 'big fix.'"
Many U.S. states, like Texas often led or dominated by Republicans,
have imposed new abortion limits in recent years.
There has long been speculation that Supreme Court Justice Anthony
Kennedy, 81, who joined the majority in the 2016 abortion case, may
retire soon, giving President Donald Trump a chance to make the
court more friendly to abortion opponents.
"The Supreme Court is always something we watch," Miller said. "We
don't have a magic 8-ball to predict its makeup, but women are being
affected by these laws every single day."
The case is Whole Woman's Health Alliance et al v Paxton et al, U.S.
District Court, Western District of Texas, No. 18-00500.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Richard
Chang)
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