Two hours before midnight on Tuesday, before a new Texas law effectively banning most abortions kicked in, 27 patients were still huddled in the waiting room of the Whole Woman’s Health abortion clinic in Fort Worth.

The women were hoping doctors could see them before the US’s most restrictive abortion law took effect, blocking almost all procedures once a foetal heartbeat is detected, usually about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they have conceived. 

Doctors, some of them in tears, completed the clinic’s last procedure at 11.56pm on Tuesday after having opened before 8am, according to Amy Hagstrom Miller, head of Whole Woman’s Health, an independent chain of four reproductive-health clinics in Texas and a plaintiff in an emergency request to block the law that the Supreme Court turned away late on Wednesday...