In their successful push this summer for strict new regulations on abortion facilities and the doctors performing them, proponents said the legislation was needed because conditions at existing facilities made it unsafe for women seeking to terminate pregnancies.

But a Texas Tribune review of state inspection records for 36 abortion clinics from the year preceding the lawmakers’ vote turned up little evidence to suggest that the facilities were putting patients in imminent danger. State auditors identified 19 regulatory violations that they said presented a risk to patient safety at six licensed abortion clinics that are not ambulatory surgical centers in Texas. None of the violations was severe enough to warrant financial penalties, according to the Department of State Health Services, which deemed the facilities’ corrective action plans sufficient to protect patients.

And between 2008 and 2013, the Texas Medical Board, which regulates the state’s physicians, took action against just three who performed abortions — all for administrative infractions that did not involve criminal practices or late-term abortions.

“The point of this legislation was to make abortion inaccessible,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, chief executive officer of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates five abortion facilities in Texas. “It wasn’t about safety, because there is no safety problem around abortion in Texas.”