Yesterday, the Supreme Court blocked a Texas lawthat closed more than a dozen clinics across the state, leaving just eight still providing abortions, and those mostly in major metropolitan areas. Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the law to move forward, leaving the state of more than 26 million people with no abortion clinics south or west of San Antonio. Some Texas women seeking abortions would have had to travel more than 500 miles to get the procedure in their home state. The clinics that shuttered after the Fifth Circuit's ruling can reopen, at least for now.

The Supreme Court's five-sentence order barred Texas from enforcing two parts of H.B. 2,a restrictive abortion law — the court blocked the enforcement of one part across the state, and another as it relates to two specific clinics. Across the state, abortion providers will not have to abide by H.B. 2's requirement that all procedures take place in hospital-style ambulatory surgical centers. And doctors at clinics in El Paso and McAllen, both of which serve areas of the state without any other in-state provider in more than 100 miles, will not have to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Providers at other Texas clinics, though, will still have to adhere to the admitting privileges requirement.

According to the order, Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito would have denied the application, allowing the law to go forward and keeping the clinics closed. It's not apparent which of the justices favored blocking the law; it takes five justices to grant an order like this one, so the court's more reliable liberal justices (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer) likely voted for it, along with either Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, or both Kennedy and Roberts.

While this decision allows 13 shuttered clinics to reopen, it's unclear if all of them actually will. Some have sold off equipment or had staff seek employment elsewhere when the facility initially closed. According to Whole Woman's Health, which operates the clinics in McAllen and El Paso, the McAllen clinic is in the process of being reopened, but the status of the clinic in El Paso remains up in the air.

Opponents of abortion say the ambulatory surgical center requirement is important to promote women's health and to make sure abortions take place under the safest circumstances possible. But abortion is already one of the safest medical procedures around, with the rate of serious complication for early procedures less than one-half of 1 percent. Even medication abortions, those done with the "abortion pill" that don't require any surgery, would have to be performed in sterile surgical centers under the law. So would standard first-trimester abortions, which do not involve incisions and therefore see very low rates of infection. Medical procedures that pose far higher risks than abortion are routinely performed in doctors' offices and see no similar surgical center requirement. As the Los Angeles Times wrote last month, "Colonoscopies can be done in doctors' offices, yet the mortality rate of that procedure is 34.5 per 100,000. That's 40 times the mortality rate of abortion in the United States from 2000 to 2009, which was 0.67 per 100,000. Dental extractions, vasectomies, skin biopsies and gastrointestinal endoscopies can all be done in doctors' offices, and all carry similar or greater risks of complications than abortion does."

[embed_gallery gid=4099 type="simple"]

The ambulatory surgical center requirement meant clinics either had to do multimillion-dollar, medically unnecessary renovations of their facilities, or move to new, costlier buildings — not an easy task when many buildings refuse to lease space to abortion providers. Admitting privileges are often difficult for abortion providers to get, because the general safety of abortions means clinics simply don't admit many patients to the hospital, and hospitals often require a minimum number of admissions in order to grant privileges. Religiously affiliated hospitals also routinely refuse privileges to abortion providers and sometimes won't even send them an application.

Still in place across Texas are H.B. 2's requirements that medication abortion, done with a two-pill regimen, be carried out in a doctor's office, so women have to take both pills at the clinic. Many abortion providers say they prefer their patients to take the second pill at home, since cramping and bleeding can start within a few minutes of taking it. H.B. 2's ban on most abortions after 20 weeks also remains in place and is already impacting Texas women and their familieswho see pregnancies go terribly wrong and are forced to go through labor and childbirth.

Those provisions have already decimated abortion access in the state. Before H.B. 2 went into effect, there were some 41 clinics across the state. Even with this latest ruling, half of those clinics remain closed, and abortion access is still very limited, especially for women outside of the state's largest cities. Inaccessible abortion means some women are turning to illegal methods, procuring abortion-inducing drugs from flea markets, the Internet, or across the Mexican border, or trying untested and often unsafe home remedies. And even for women who are able to obtain abortions, clinic closures mean the process can be more burdensome and may take longer, since for many it necessitates traveling farther, taking time off work, finding child care, and saving up enough money for a procedure that gets more expensive as pregnancy progresses.

This Supreme Court order is only temporary, until the Fifth Circuit decides on a constitutional challenge to H.B. 2, which may allow the clinics to remain operational or may shutter them once again.

Follow Jill on Twitter.

Jill Filipovic senior political writer Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io