Texas lawmakers finalized a bill to walk back parts of the state’s abortion ban this week, because, surprise, surprise, it turns out that abortion care is healthcare. The bill, sent to the governor on Tuesday, is intended to give Texans a slightly lesser chance of dying during pregnancy or childbirth by clarifying some medical emergencies in which doctors can provide abortive care.
The bipartisan measure is part of the mixed-results of a legislative session that looked quite grim for reproductive rights in Texas. At the outset, reporting and research made it clear that, under the state’s restrictive abortion laws, women were dying, babies were dying, sepsis rates among mothers soared, and doctors were fleeing the state. Then Attorney General Ken Paxton announced his next target… birthworkers.
Several bills filed were even more extreme than the existing law, including classifying abortion medication as controlled substances, prosecuting internet providers for hosting abortion information, charging abortion advocates with racketeering and giving the death penalty for abortion patients.
But as lawmakers begin packing their bags to adjourn until the next session in two years, the window to pass nearly all of those proposals is also coming to a close.
The biggest “win” that lawmakers had (depending on who you ask) was the aforementioned bipartisan effort to help “clarify” what counts as a medical exception to Texas’ abortion bans. The aim of the “Life of the Mother Act” was purely a medical exception and a cleanup, state Rep. Ann Johnson of Houston, a co-author of the bill, said during testimony for the committee on public health in early April.
In its final version, the bill says:
- A “life-threatening,” for purposes of the exception, means the situation can cause death, but “is not necessarily one actively injuring the patient.”
- A doctor may address the risk before the patient suffers any effects.
- Doctors must try to save a pregnancy, unless the mother is at risk of dying or suffering “substantial impairment.”
- Reasonable medical judgment includes removing an ectopic pregnancy or spontaneous miscarriage.
- Doctors and pharmacists will not be subject to legal action as long as they were found to be treating “life threatening” complications.
- Providing medical care or information for a person who needs a life-saving abortion will not constitute “aiding and abetting.”
- The state will create courses for both attorneys and doctors to take to understand what are “medical emergencies” and what abortion care is legal
Abortion advocates were wary of initial versions, some calling it a “trojan horse,” because of a provision that could have revived a 1925 law to criminalize pregnant patients who chose an abortion. In May, after the bill passed the Senate, lawmakers decided to clarify that the bill would not revive that law. In addition, the bill that the governor is set to sign does not allow for exemptions for for rape, incest, a teen pregnancy or if you have a fatal fetal abnormality.
While many have celebrated the bill as a compromise, data shows that exemptions are not effective when it comes to legislating healthcare. Part of the reason is that medical complications in people are hard to list in totality.
“You can’t just write a list of exceptions to medical scenarios. There is no end to the real life situations that occur where patients need to be able to have these open, honest communication moments with their providers. So there’s no list that lawyers could write down that are exceptions,” Dr. Austin Dennard, a Dallas-based OB-GYN and plaintiff in Zurawski v. Texas told The Barbed Wire.
Several other abortion laws that had reproductive rights advocates concerned did not advance to the governor’s desk. That includes Senate Bill 2880, which would’ve allowed any private citizen to sue anyone for a minimum of $100,000 who distributed or provided abortion pills in Texas and would’ve forced attorneys who legally challenge the bill to pay for all legal fees for everyone involved. There were also fears that the 1925 law criminalizing people who get abortion care would be revived in Senate Bill 2880 after it was effectively taken out of the “clarification” law.
A bill filed by Rep. Brent Money that would’ve treated a fertilized egg as a person and made terminating a pregnancy a homicide, which in Texas is punishable by the death penalty, never made it out of committees.
The bill that would’ve treated abortion funds like organized crime rings and forced all internet service providers to block access to information on obtaining an abortion did not come up for a vote; other bills would have classified abortion medication as controlled substances also never got a vote.
For now, at least it’s slightly less terrifying to think about getting pregnant in Texas and dying during a miscarriage.
