On Thursday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas may begin enforcing HB 2, an omnibus antiabortion law that requires abortion clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers, and requires abortion providers to gain admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles. The three-judge panel blocked an injunction granted by a federal district judge in September on the grounds that the law does not present an “undue burden” to women, allowing HB 2 to take effect immediately. On Friday, no more than eight abortion clinics in the state of Texas — a state of 20 million people and more than a quarter million square miles — will remain open.

Eighty percent of Texas abortion clinics have been forced to close. Eighty percent. Opponents of the law have repeated this number over and over again since before the Fifth Circuit ruling was handed down, but the repetition hasn’t gotten through so far. According to the appeals panel, neither removing the vast majority of women’s safe reproductive care options, nor forcing approximately 1 million Texans to drive more than 100 miles to reach a clinic poses an undue burden to women seeking abortions. That raises an important question that the Supreme Court, most likely, will have to answer: What, besides a straightforward ban on abortion access, constitutes an undue burden to women? Over how many hurdles will Texans or women in other states have to leap to access care? How many women, and how high will they have to jump?

“Women’s ability to exercise constitutional rights now depends on zip code,” Stephanie Toti, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a press conference on Thursday. “It’s undisputed that nearly a million Texas women are going to face a 300-mile round trip to access abortion services. Women are going to face distances of over 1,000 miles. There has been an 80 percent reduction in the number of clinics. If that’s not a substantial obstacle, I don’t know what a substantial obstacle would be.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights plans to appeal the Fifth Circuit ruling. The center’s president, Nancy Northup, believes the case is “crying out for review” by the U.S. Supreme Court. “I wouldn’t speculate about what the court will do,” Northup said. “What I can say is that it is going to be a showdown that we have not seen in two decades, on whether the promise of Roe v. Wade will have meaning for women in the U.S. If the Supreme Court were to uphold the law in Texas, which is not based on health and safety… they will have hollowed out those protections.”

Northup’s point that it’s not worth speculating couldn’t be more valid at such a dire time. Too much speculation — about the fictitious benefits to women’s health ambulatory surgical center standards will have, about the need for hospital admitting privileges — had already occurred. Medical experts have already made clear that the stipulations of HB 2, drawn up and enacted by lawmakers for the express purpose of shutting down abortion clinics, do nothing to promote patient health. For women seeking abortions, these restrictions only serve to put their health at risk. But lawmakers believe otherwise, based on anything but medical or scientific fact. They have speculated wrongly about the possible outcomes HB 2 will have for women’s health, in a way that is not only delusional, but shows a patent disregard for the lives of Texans.