The closure of an abortion clinic in northwestern Louisiana leaves just three other such clinics in the state.
The Bossier City Medical Suite’s phone number was no longer in service Tuesday and the website was down. State business records show the company’s officers are the same Texas-based principals of Causeway Medical Suite, a suburban New Orleans facility that closed last year. They could not be reached for comment.
Louisiana’s remaining clinics are in Shreveport, Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
The closures come as abortion restrictions imposed by the Legislature force clinics to fight costly legal battles. Currently, abortion providers in Louisiana are fighting restrictions including a requirement for a 72-hour waiting period for many women, and a ban on a common second-trimester procedure called dilation and evacuation.
“Between clinic regulations and, every legislative session, new things coming, new laws that are coming out, it’s a constant battle trying to meet those requirements or challenge those regulations,” said Kathaleen Pittman of Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport. The Delta Clinic in Baton Rouge and the Women’s Health Care Center in New Orleans also remain open.
The anti-abortion organization Louisiana Right to Life welcomed the news.
“With the closure of Bossier City Medical Suite, there is one less facility in Louisiana destroying the lives of innocent unborn babies,” the organization’s executive director, Benjamin Clapper, said in a news release.
The Bossier facility was one of three facing closure last year until courts blocked enforcement of laws requiring abortion clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The Supreme Court struck down Texas’ version of that law.