Texas GOP seeks to block legal challenges against abortion
Texas Republicans are rolling ahead with a controversial bill that seeks to further restrict abortion access in the state, while making it impossible for it to be challenged in state courts, despite Democratic objections.
Senate Bill 2880 advanced through the state Senate and is now heading for a House vote, after being moved Friday out of the Committee on State Affairs, with its chair facing growing pressure ahead of a Saturday deadline.
More than 40 House Republicans sent a letter to state Rep. Ken King, the chair, urging him to move the bill, while some held a last-minute press conference pushing for passage of the abortion bill and other conservative priorities.
Republican state senators wrote in their own letter to King that existing laws were not enough to guard against abortions in the state, mainly due to the continued availability of medicated abortion.
'Texas is in crisis. The tremendous protections afforded to mothers and children by S.B. 8, the Heartbeat Bill (87R), and H.B. 1290, the Trigger Bill (87R), is subverted daily by bad actors who flood our state with dangerous and deadly abortion pills,' they wrote. 'This must end.'
Texas is already among the most restrictive states on abortion. Laws enacted since Roe v. Wade was struck down have no exceptions for rape or incest, and physicians who violate the laws face potential fines and jail time. Women have died in the state because of the abortion law.
Senate Bill 2880, if passed, would allow anyone who makes, distributes, prescribes or provides abortion medication or provides information on how a person can obtain an abortion-inducing drug to be sued for up to $100,000.
'It should worry every American,' said Texas state Sen. Nathan Johnson, one of the many Democrats sounding the alarm on the bill. 'It's absolutely an abomination from a lot of standpoints.'
It's unclear if the bill will be passed during Texas's legislative session, which is slated to end June 2.
Texas almost entirely banned abortion in 2021 after state lawmakers passed a bill prohibiting the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, before most women know they are pregnant.
Maternal mortality in Texas rose by 56 percent in the year following the passage of the six-week ban, according to the research and gender policy nonprofit the Gender Equity Policy Institute.
The Lone Star State has since fought to further restrict abortion access, most notably by attempting to punish abortion providers who mail abortion medication to Texans from states where abortion is legal.
Texas became the first state to sue an abortion provider in a state with an abortion shield law late last year. In December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued New York doctor Margaret Carpenter for allegedly prescribing and mailing abortion medication via a telehealth service.
Senate Bill 2880 is trying to take the state's near-total ban on abortion further. Under the bill, those who provide abortion medication are liable to wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits from family members of those who undergo abortions.
'From the abortion perspective, it's like a Russian doll of a bill,' said Texas state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt (D).
It also allows for the attorney general to file lawsuits against abortion medication providers, prescribers or manufacturers on 'behalf of unborn children of residents of this state.'
'It's a very scary abortion bill, but it also sets a precedent that reaches far beyond abortion,' Eckhardt said.
Beyond the clear restrictions on abortion, Democratic senators are worried over language in the bill that seeks to make it impossible to challenge it as unconstitutional in state court. Democratic lawmakers argue it's a clear attempt by Republican lawmakers to make the judiciary system powerless in the state.
'I think that's unprecedented,' said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis.
'It's crazy that the bill says it can't be challenged in court, and then it's also crazy that they don't even want it to be challenged in court … you have to [be] writing a bill that you're pretty darn sure is unconstitutional to not want the Texas courts to look at it.'
Democratic lawmakers, like Eckhardt, and reproductive-rights advocates worry that even if the bill doesn't pass, it will inspire future similar legislation in Texas and elsewhere.
'Texas has often served as a sort of litmus test for anti-abortion extremists. The very same lawmaker that came up with Texas' vigilante law banning abortion is now attempting the same with medication abortion,' said Nimra Chowdhry, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
'State officials are intent on trapping Texans and ending all abortion access in the state, no matter the cost to people's lives. And we could see more like-minded states attempt the same.'
Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the bill's author, did not respond to questions from The Hill about the bill.
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