“It would absolutely catastrophic for women’s health – that’s not an overstatement,” says Sarah Lipton-Lubet, the director of reproductive health programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that focuses on access to health care and reproductive rights. “There’s nothing about this legislation that’s actually about protecting or enhancing or even maintaining health care services for women,” she says. “It’s about playing politics with women’s health.”

According to a recent report from the National Partnership for Women & Families, 33 states are currently enforcing at least one of four different types of “bad medicine” laws — unnecessary ultrasound requirements, biased counseling sessions, mandatory waiting periods, and regulations on the abortion pill — that aren’t grounded in any scientific evidence.

(Document and recommendations endorsed by the National Partnership for Women & Families)

Too often the Texas Legislature inserts politics into the exam room. Both patients and providers suffer as a result. Unfortunately, Texas is not alone – a 2014 report by the National Partnership for Women & Families, “Bad Medicine: How a Political Agenda is Undermining Women’s Health Care,” finds that a majority of states have one or more laws like these.

Debra Ness, the president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, said that even with the deal, “trafficking survivors will still face unconscionable restrictions to accessing the reproductive health services they need.”