Activists on both sides of the abortion debate are expressing skepticism that the closure of most clinics in Texas will lead women to obtain the procedure from doctors that are not licensed to perform it — an option that is legal and was discussed in a Texas Tribune story published this week.

The Tribune story published Tuesday noted that state law does not require gynecology and obstetrics practices, as well as other physicians’ offices, to get an abortion license — and thus comply with some strict regulations on the procedure — if they perform fewer than 50 abortions per year.

Thousands of Texas women got abortions from unlicensed doctors a decade ago, before it became much less common, the story noted, and after a court ruling last week forced all but eight clinics in the state to close, women could return to that option.

The activists agreed the ruling may cause some Texans to turn to less conventional options to obtain abortions, but they said there is a reason why it is no longer common for unlicensed doctors to provide the procedure — the Legislature voted in 2003 to make it much harder.

That year, as noted in the Tribune story, lawmakers approved the “Women’s Right to Know Act,” which required women seeking an abortion to discuss certain information with the doctor and wait at least 24 hours before getting the procedure. But the Legislature also passed House Bill 2292, a series of sweeping changes to the state health and human services agencies unveiled in 2002, which lowered the maximum number of abortions that doctors could perform before getting a license from 300 to 50.

Abortions in doctors’ offices plummeted from 10,985 in 2002 (14 percent of the procedures in the state) to 388 in 2003 (0.5 percent) before dropping even further, according to the Department of State Health Services. There were 43 such procedures in 2012.

HB 2292 “is the precise reason” for the drop, said Joe Pojman, longtime executive director of the anti-abortion Texas Alliance for Life, arguing that the law will likely prevent a major increase in legal abortions from unlicensed doctors.

Lucy Stein of Progress Texas, a liberal group that supports abortion rights, agreed the legislation was the reason for the drop.

Because of the law and because “even doctors who support legal abortion do so out of a fear of back-alley abortions, but are still quite squeamish about it themselves,” said Kyleen Wright, president of the Texans for Life Coalition, there will probably only be a “negligible” increase in abortions from doctors’ office.

That assessment was echoed by Dr. Dan Grossman, vice president for research at Ibis Reproductive Health, who has decried the drop in abortion access in Texas and was a top expert witness in the ongoing lawsuit by abortion providers against regulations on the procedure.

“There might be some increase in the number of abortions performed by private physicians post-HB2, but I doubt it will be numerically very large,” Grossman said in an email. “There were only 43 abortions performed by physicians in 2012. Even if that increased 10-fold, that would only be 0.6% of all the abortions performed in the state.”