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Texas abortion providers on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up their legal challenge to two provisions of the state's strict abortion law. After losing at the appellate level, a coalition of abortion providers is asking the high court for a reprieve from restrictions passed by the Texas Legislature in 2013. Those rules will require some abortion facilities to retrofit their clinics to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers, from minimum sizes for rooms and doorways to pipelines for anesthesia and other infrastructure. (Ura, 9/2)

Abortion in Ohio dropped 8.7 percent from 2013 to 2014, with the state registering the lowest number of abortions for one year since it began tracking the statistics in the '70s, according to data from the Ohio Department of Health. Overall, there were 21,186 induced pregnancy terminations in 2014. That is a decline from 23,216 abortions the previous year. (Higgs, 9/2)