A bill clarifying when doctors can perform abortions under Texas’ near-total ban will now go to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk after the House approved the bill with wide bipartisan support. Despite some concerns raised by conservative Republicans, the narrow bill does not expand abortion access, but rather aims to ensure pregnant patients can get life-saving medical care.
Bill sponsor Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican from Fort Worth, stressed that this was not a “choice bill,” but rather an attempt to ensure the existing limits of the law are “clear, consistent, fair and understandable.”
“We do not want women to die from medical emergencies during their pregnancy,” Geren said before a preliminary vote Wednesday. “We don’t want women’s lives to be destroyed because their bodies have been seriously impaired.”
Texas banned all abortions three years ago, with a narrow exception that allows doctors to terminate a pregnancy only to save a pregnant patient’s life. Immediately, doctors and legal experts warned that this exception was too narrow and vaguely written, and the penalties too severe, to ensure that women could get life-saving care.
That has proven true in many cases. Dozens of women have come forward with stories of medically necessary abortions delayed or denied, and at least three women have died as a result of these laws. Faced with these stories, Republican lawmakers have conceded that the language of the law might need some clearing up.
Senate Bill 31, also called the Life of the Mother Act, aligns language among the state’s abortion laws, codifies court rulings and requires education for doctors and lawyers on the nuances of the law. It passed the House 134-4 on Thursday.
The bill was tightly negotiated among lobbyists for doctors and hospitals, anti-abortion groups and Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola, who authored the bill, and Geren.
“These groups don’t always see eye to eye,” Geren said. “But in this case, they worked together to ensure pregnant women with pregnancy complications get appropriate and timely care.”
In the Senate, Republicans threw their support behind the bill, while Democrats pushed back on its narrowness, noting that Texas law still does not allow abortions in cases of rape, incest or lethal fetal anomalies.
“The folks who are working on this fix are, from my perspective, the folks who have created the problem,” said Houston Sen. Molly Cook. “Over the past four years, we’ve watched women suffer and die, and this bill is the confirmation that we all agree that something is broken in Texas.”
In the House, however, the bill faced headwinds from the right, as conservative Republicans rallied to the idea that this bill would allow doctors to resume elective abortions. Rep. Brent Money, a Greenville Republican, said he believed the laws were clear as written but there had been “malicious interpretations” by pro-abortion doctors.
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Some doctors groups, including the Texas chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have criticized the bill for not going far enough to protect doctors and the patients they treat. Others say these changes will be sufficient to free doctors to perform medically necessary abortions without fear of lengthy prison sentences and massive fines.
Texas Hospital Association president John Hawkins said in a statement that the bill’s passage is “a great step forward for Texas women and health care.”
“We’re grateful we were able to move past the politics to find common ground,” Hawkins said. “Lawmakers followed through on input from patients, hospitals and physicians to strengthen and clarify laws to better protect moms. Once finalized, this will have an immediate and positive impact, helping us provide life-saving care to pregnant women in distress.”
See here for some background. Sen. Cook is correct, but this is what we got, and it comes with a lot of caveats. I’ll let Jessica Valenti explain where we ended up.
Abortion, Every Day first reported on SB 31 back in March, warning that it was a Trojan Horse—a bill designed to bring back a 1925 abortion ban that could be used to prosecute abortion funds, helpers, and even patients. AED’s reporting created a domino effect of coverage that put pressure on lawmakers to amend the bill and walk that plan back.
Their original plans foiled, Republicans have since shifted their attention to another bill—SB 2880—where they’re still trying to revive that century-old ban. And SB 31? Still a big problem!
The bill allows Texas Republicans to pretend that they’ve ‘softened’ their stance and offered legal clarity to doctors, even though it doesn’t actually expand exceptions. What’s more, the bill requires doctors to take a continuing education course about the state’s abortion ban—designed and taught by an organization hand-picked by Texas Republicans.
Translation: anti-abortion activists will be teaching doctors when and how they’re allowed to save a woman’s life.
How do I know? Because we’ve seen this before! When South Dakota Republicans passed a similar requirement, the state teamed up with the extremist American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) to create their ‘educational’ materials for doctors.
This is an organization that insists abortion is never medically necessary—and recommends c-sections for women with life-threatening pregnancies rather than safer, faster, less painful abortions. So maybe not the best folks to be giving medical advice!
Per usual, Texas is a testing ground for what anti-abortion groups want nationally. These so-called ‘Med Ed’ bills—which are becoming a trend—let lawmakers pretend they’re working with doctors to clarify care, when what they’re really doing is establishing a terrifying new norm: that the government gets to dictate when and how doctors treat their patients in medical emergencies.
So there you have it. And by the way, that other bill SB2880 got voted out of the House committee, meaning it is likely to get passed if it comes to a floor vote before Tuesday, when another deadline kicks in. What does this bill do?
If the bill becomes law, anyone who manufactures, distributes, mails, prescribes or provides abortion-inducing drugs can be sued for up to $100,000, even if the pills aren’t proven to be the cause of death for the fetus. It expands the wrongful death statute to encourage men whose partners willingly terminate their pregnancies to sue whoever provided the pills for up to six years after the event. It also empowers the Attorney General to bring lawsuits on behalf of “unborn children of residents of this state.”
The bill also contains a controversial provision that says it cannot be challenged in state court before it is enforced, and a state judge who holds the law to be unconstitutional can be personally sued for $100,000.
Isn’t that lovely? Look, SB31 passed with broad bipartisan support, as Democrats believed, with justification, that it was the best they were going to get this session. But that one bill allows for a lot of cover for the others, and there’s no way to look at this session and conclude that abortion access and women’s health are any better off now than they were going in. The narrative that Republicans did something to make things a little better is powerful and enticing, and even if that were objectively true it doesn’t change the fact that on net we’re 99% worse than we were in 2021. We can’t lose sight of that and we can’t let any counterfactual take hold.