A Texas doctor decided to give dozens of coronavirus patients at a nursing home a controversial, experimental medication, in some cases without telling their families first. He defends the decision.
The decision allows the ban while litigation continues. Top state Republican officials have said abortion is an elective procedure and should be suspended to save medical supplies during the pandemic.
The coronavirus outbreak led President Trump to close U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico last week. At the southern border, the closure is affecting life on both the U.S. and Mexico sides.
Groups opposed to abortion rights have signed a letter asking federal health officials to urge abortion providers to "cease operations" in an effort to preserve medical equipment.
More parents are sending children across the Gateway International Bridge to Brownsville, Texas, to get them away from squalid, dangerous conditions in a displaced persons camp in Matamoros, Mexico.
"Texas has carried more than its share in assisting the refugee resettlement process," Abbott, a Republican, said in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday.
Some migrant parents who were told to wait in Mexico under President Trump's asylum policies are sending their children, unaccompanied, across the bridge to surrender to U.S. agents.
The blast is the latest in a string of industrial incidents in east Texas. The explosion at the petrochemical plant injured three people and blew out windows and mangled doors of some nearby homes.