Posted By: Amanda Hart
You may have heard, anti-choice legislators have proposed some really dangerous bills that will severely limit access to abortion in Texas.
Please join us in rallying with the Lilith Fund this Monday evening at Houston’s City Hall! The program begins at 6 pm at City Hall, 901 Bagby. Let’s show Texas legislators that Houston is taking a stand against these attacks on reproductive rights and we are not having it.
Program:
Introduction: Lilith Fund’s Amanda Williams
First speaker: Long-time Houston activist, Andrea Greer
Keynote speaker: Houston Representative Jessica Farrar
Closing and Action Speech: Lilith Fund’s Tawny Tidwell
Here is some information on these bills, starting with the omnibus bill, Senate Bill #5:
SB 5 – Author: Senator Hegar – This bill serves as an abortion restrict omnibus bill, and includes regulation of abortion procedures, providers, and facilities; providing penalties.
SB 5 will effectively BAN medication abortions by putting untenable restrictions on physicians. It will require that all abortion facilities be ambulatory surgical centers, closing all but 5 clinics. It will BAN abortion after 20 weeks. It will require physicians have admitting privileges at any hospital their patient might later be admitted to for complications following an abortion - surgical or medication - which is something no doctor can realistically secure.
SB 13 – Author: Senator Hegar – This bill mandates a ban on abortion at 20 weeks and greatly interferes with women’s healthcare decisions before she and her doctor may have important health information about her own health and the health of the pregnancy. Twenty week abortion bans are not only bad policy because they would prevent a woman from making her own personal, private decision about her health and medical care, but because they clearly violate women’s constitutional rights by banning abortion before viability.
SB 18 – Author: Senator Patrick – This bill would further increase the in-person requirements for physicians. In addition to the in-person sonogram 24 hours ahead of the abortion, doctors would have to personally administer both of the two medications used for drug-induced abortions, and see the patient again for a follow-up appointment within 14 days, a particular challenge for the roving doctors who treat women in the state’s rural counties.
This bill serves to further restrict access to nonsurgical abortion (medical abortion) and unfairly targets rural and low-income women. At Planned Parenthood, we support making healthcare more accessible and oppose the new regulatory burdens created by this bill and not required by the FDA.
SB 24 – Author: Senator Deuell – This bill would require medically unnecessary regulations of all health care centers that provide safe and legal abortions. Excessive regulations are already in place in Texas, far exceeding what is necessary to uphold patient health and safety at health centers that provide safe, legal abortion. The additional requirements of SB 24 are excessive and medically unnecessary requirements, and will be difficult for women’s health centers to meet.
House companions and other bills recently filed relating to abortion for special session:
HB 16 - Laubenberg’s 20 week ban
SB 55 - Fletcher’s bill on sex selection bill
SB 57 - Burkett’s bill on admitting privileges
HB 60 - Laubenberg’s bill on provider regulations
HB 61 - Van Taylor’s bill on provider licensing
HB 63 - Krause’s bill on provider regulations
If Texas really wants to promote a culture that supports families, our lawmakers need to focus on taking care of the children we have. Texans want public funding for education and health care for our children, not more unnecessary regulation of Texan’s reproductive health care.
Eliminating access to a legal medical procedure for people who do not live near major cities and who cannot get the funds together for a procedure before 20 weeks creates an inequality based on income and geography that is intolerable in a free country.
Texans deserve better. We are not taking these attacks lightly and we are asking you to join the fight!
You can find more information about the Lilith Fund here.
