New abortion law sparks debate at town hall meeting
Texas’ controversial new abortion law sparked spirited debate at a town hall meeting in Wichita Falls Wednesday evening. The meeting was sponsored by 69th Dist. State Rep. James, R-Wichita Falls, who is running for re-election.
The new law makes performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to life in prison. The law has very few exceptions which brought about a question of terminating pregnancies in the event of rape.
"I know we need to have as much help for those people as possible. You're choosing between two of the worst situations you can ever have. Are you going to end that life because you don't like the way it started?" asked an audience member.
"A fetus is not a baby," another audience member said.
"Do you not think that's a life until the day it's born? You're never going to agree that it's OK," Frank said.
The discussion grew tense when Kathleen Brown, a Wichita Falls attorney and Democratic nominee for U.S. Congress, claimed Texas law protects physicians from "their own gross negligence" when babies die.
"So, for whatever reason, the Legislature believed that life began at conception unless a quack killed it and then it was OK for the quack to kill it and then you couldn't sue the doctor," she said.
She asked if Frank would favor waiving attorney client privilege in the Legislature so the public could understand what lawmakers took into consideration when they enacted the law.
"I will look at it because I really don't understand it and I don't want to have a debate right here on it," Frank replied.
He told Brown she had used up her time.
"You can have your own town hall," he said.
"You created a situation where everybody who's going to have a baby in the next two years will not have a doctor because they will wait until that mother codes on the bed before they do anything," she shot back.
Another woman asked what kinds of sex education schools would provide to lower the number of unwanted pregnancies.
"I really don't get into curriculum because I don't know how appropriate that is," Frank said.
Frank also discusses the inner-workings of the Legislature at the meeting at Midwestern State University.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: New abortion law sparks debate at town hall meeting
