It’s what they do. There is no finish line for them.
During their 20 years in control of the Texas Legislature, Republican lawmakers have steadfastly worked to chip away at abortion access.
Bound by the limits of Roe v. Wade, which stopped them from enacting an outright ban on the procedure, lawmakers got creative. They required abortion clinics to have wide hallways and deputized private citizens to sue providers in an effort to shut down facilities that offer the procedure.
Future lawmaking on the topic will likely not require such ingenuity. A leaked draft of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion, published last week by Politico, suggests the court will reverse the landmark abortion ruling in the coming weeks, allowing states to regulate abortion as they see fit. Texas has a “trigger law” that would make performing an abortion a felony, which would go into effect 30 days after the Supreme Court overturns Roe.
Their decadeslong goal achieved, Republican lawmakers said there’s still work to be done. Texas GOP leaders and members of the Legislature said it is now time to turn their attention to strengthening the social safety net for women and children and investing in foster care and adoption services.
“It only makes sense,” said Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands. “The dog’s caught the car now.”
At least some of the more conservative members of the House said they also want to ensure strict enforcement of the abortion ban and to prevent pregnant Texans from seeking legal abortions in other states.
“I think I can speak for myself and other colleagues that align with my policy beliefs — we’ll continue to do our best to make abortion not just outlawed, but unthinkable,” said Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus.
Texas already has an arsenal of statutes to punish virtually anyone involved in the procurement of an abortion, said University of Texas at Austin law professor Liz Sepper. These include last year’s Senate Bill 8, which empowers private citizens to sue anyone who “abets” an abortion after six weeks of gestational age, as well as unenforced pre-Roe abortion statutes criminalizing a person who gets the procedure, which the Legislature never repealed — some dating to the 1850s.
“If Roe is overturned, there’s already a criminal ban, there’s already an aiding and abetting ban, there’s already a ban on mailing medication abortion,” Sepper said. “In terms of law’s ability to change behavior, they’ve almost filled all the gaps — with the exception of criminalizing the pregnant person involved in an abortion.”
And you better believe that’s where they’ll be going next, though to be sure there are plenty of other avenues for them to pursue as well. This is what gives creeps like Briscoe Cain their purpose in life. If somehow they do eventually run out of things to ban, next up after that is increasing penalties and making it easier for law enforcement to go after whoever the likes of Cain thinks are getting away with something. Listen to what they’re saying – they are not being coy at all about this.
Now as for the claims that maybe now it’s time to do a little something to “strengthen the safety net”, well, let’s just say that they are starting from a position of abolutely no credibility.
With a near-total abortion ban looming in Texas, advocates and experts say the state’s support systems for low-income mothers and children are already insufficient — and won’t easily bear an increase in need.
“When you say ‘social safety net’ in Texas, it sounds like a joke,” said D’Andra Willis of the Afiya Center, a North Texas reproductive justice group. “Everything they could have set up or increased to protect people if they really cared, they’re not doing it here.”
Pregnant women in Texas are more likely to be uninsured and less likely to seek early prenatal care than the rest of the country. They’ll give birth in one of the worst states for maternal mortality and morbidity. And low-income new parents will be kicked off of Medicaid sooner than in many other states.
This would make many Texans want to avoid pregnancy altogether. But learning about, let alone accessing, contraception can be a challenge in a state that does not require sex education and has narrowed family planning options in recent years.
Republican lawmakers, many of whom have focused on restricting abortion access in recent years, have said strengthening the state’s social safety net will now become a top priority. But advocates who have been working on these issues for years say any help will likely be too little, too late.
“People fail to realize that this is bigger than abortion access,” Willis said. “We’re going to be setting people up for generational poverty.”
As with so many other policy items, like boosting mental health care as their prescription to reduce mass shootings, the single biggest thing they could do to achieve that goal would be to expand Medicaid. More than 55% of all births in Texas are paid by Medicaid. I think you can guess how high that is on their priority list. But even if you want to give them a tiny bit of benefit of the doubt, note that it’s just now that they are on the verge of achieving an abortion ban that they’re even beginning to think about maybe doing something to benefit those who are pregnant and have given birth. Look at their priorities, that will tell you how much that counted for them. Why would you expect that to change going forward?
