After Supreme Court ruling, abortion in Texas became a crime. Now, let’s fix the law | Opinion
Pro-life advocates just finished the 50th annual March for Life in Washington. Here in Texas, the Legislature should wrestle with much-needed changes to the state’s abortion ban, because some of the language about healthcare emergencies has created confusion in the medical community about when and how to treat pregnant women struggling in labor.
Abortion policy has been interesting to observe in Texas, one of the first states to essentially ban the procedure at six weeks’ gestation, even before the June 2022 Supreme Court decision that turned abortion policy back to the states. After that ruling, Texas’ trigger law made it a felony to perform an abortion and allowed for punitive measures, via fines and time in jail.
Texas has been called many things for its policy, including extreme. But what’s actually happened since 2021? Is Texas inundated in babies? Is there a thriving underground abortion service? Are there hundreds of lawsuits against abortion providers? Texas is more pro-life than ever, but some changes should still be made to the law to protect women.
The Guttmacher Institute, a policy organization focused on reproductive health, estimates that in 2017, 55,440 abortions were provided in Texas. That’s a lot — 159 a day. According to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, just 68 abortions were performed on Texas residents in the state in July 2022. There was a 96% decrease in the number of abortions in the South Central region of America, including states such as Texas, Kentucky and Tennessee from April to August. That’s an incredible decline.
If sheer numbers alone were to be the judge, pro-life advocates and policymakers succeeded. However, these numbers don’t quite tell the whole story — and they shouldn’t.
Via the Lozier Institute, a policy organization focused on data and medical research, births in Texas also increased by 3%, when comparing Texas births from March 2022 to July 2022 to the three previous years during that time span.
Abortions didn’t vanish entirely under Texas’ policy. When the initial six-week ban went into effect in September 2021, “Planned Parenthood clinics in the five states neighboring Texas saw a nearly 800% increase in abortion patients,” particularly in Colorado and Oklahoma. According to the Society of Family Planning, in states surrounding Texas where abortions are still legal, there was a slight uptick of 3%.
“Nevertheless, the increases in numbers of abortions in states where abortion was legal did not compensate for the reductions seen in states where abortion was banned,” the group added. So, even added out-of-state abortions did not come close to the number that used to occur in Texas. As for abortion lawsuits, that number has been low, too. In December, a San Antonio judge threw out a case brought against a provider because the person who brought the lawsuit had no connection whatsoever to the provider, in direct contradiction to the law.
Pro-life clinics that exist to help women with unplanned pregnancies, often funded in part by state grants and donations, are busier than ever before. Pro-life advocates must continue to help pregnant women and those raising babies.
The effects are positive, but there’s still a need in the law to better define medical emergencies and perhaps even adjust the language banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected.
There have been a handful of stories of women in unusually precarious situations wherein the mother’s membranes have ruptured prematurely and the baby is underdeveloped yet a heart beat persists, the mother is in the process of miscarrying, or she is severely ill or near-septic. Due to the wording of the law, doctors in these cases chose not to immediately induce labor but “wait and see” until the woman is closer to a “medical emergency.”
As that term is vague and subjective — it’s literally the only phrase the law uses — more detail could help physicians and other providers ensure that they are not keeping a woman with a dying fetus from getting sepsis by waiting to keep from getting sued or criminally charged. A woman shouldn’t end up fighting for her life after losing her baby.
From the stories, doctors are suggesting risky delays and complications. Patients often face “obstetrical conditions such as ectopic pregnancies, incomplete miscarriages, placental problems, and premature rupture of membranes.” Perhaps these specific instances, and wording that includes a range of similar ones, could be added to clarify.
The intent of the heartbeat law is to save the unborn, not to push mothers to the brink of death because doctors are trying to avoid a lawsuit. This must change. Texas is not promoting a culture of life by decreasing abortions to nearly zero while mothers fear getting pregnant and enduring an agonizing, complicated pregnancy because of a vaguely worded law.
Even still, pro-life advocates should remain pleased and hopeful. There are more babies being born than at any point in the last 50 years, and that is a good thing.
