Texas Senate passes sweeping bill targeting out-of-state abortion pill providers

Yahoo

01-05-2025

Although abortion is banned beginning at fertilization in Texas, abortion-inducing drugs continue to flow in from out-of-state prescribers and manufacturers, allowing thousands of Texans to end their pregnancies each year.
With Senate Bill 2880, Republican state lawmakers want to send a message: If you think we'll continue to let that happen, you're wrong.
The sweeping proposal — considered the most wide-ranging abortion pill crackdown in the country — passed from the state Senate in a party-line vote Wednesday night, with Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, the only GOP member to abstain.
SB 2880 now heads to the lower chamber, where 38 of 88 House Republicans have signed onto its companion bill, House Bill 5510.
If enacted, the legislation would allow private citizens to sue out-of-state pill prescribers, manufacturers and distributors for $100,000 or more per violation, an unprecedented expansion of Texans' power to enforce state laws outside of Texas' bounds. Internet websites and payment processors like Venmo and PayPal, too, would face liability if they facilitate the distribution of abortion pills to Texans.
SB 2880 also makes it a felony to pay for another person's abortion or to destroy evidence of one. As is the case for current Texas laws on abortion, women who terminate their own pregnancies cannot be held liable, and there is an exception for physicians who perform abortions to save a patient's life.
More: Abortion pills by mail surge despite Texas' bans. How long can it last? | Opinion
Furthermore, the bill would explicitly authorize Texas' attorney general to enforce the state's criminal abortion laws — including a ban originating in 1857 — by suing violators on behalf of "unborn children of the residents of this state."
The bill's author, Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola, said the proposal 'protects women from abortion pills."
'Those little unborn babies and those moms who've been lied to, who haven't been told the truth, who are scared and alone dealing with these pills — in most cases, they need someone to protect themselves when they can't,' Hughes told his colleagues on the Senate floor Tuesday evening. 'That's what the bill does.'
Austin Democratic state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt vehemently disagreed that the proposal protects women, calling it a "bounty hunter bonanza."
"I don't feel protected, I feel attacked," Eckhardt said before the final vote Wednesday. "These bills are designed to isolate women, threatening the family, friends, doctors, organizations, lawyers and judges they might turn to for help."
Hughes put Texas at the forefront of anti-abortion legislation in 2021 with SB 8. That law used a private civil enforcement mechanism to circumvent Roe v. Wade's federal abortion protections, effectively outlawing the procedure in Texas nine months before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in its Dobbs decision. SB 2880 uses that same mechanism.
Hughes also authored SB 31, clarifying medical exceptions in the state's abortion bans, which unanimously passed Tuesday.
More: Texas Senate unanimously passes abortion ban clarification bill
Democratic state Sen. Nathan Johnson questioned Hughes for nearly an hour about the bill's unusual provisions on judicial standing and jurisprudence. SB 2880 significantly limits how it can be challenged in court, holding that state district judges can be held liable for at least $100,000 in penalties if they block its enforcement.
'Can (the bill) tell the courts you can't review a law for constitutionality, or is this a flagrant transgression of the principle of separation and powers on which this country and state was founded?' Johnson, an attorney from Dallas, asked Hughes.
'No, sir, we make the rules,' Hughes responded. 'We set the jurisdiction.'
'So I suppose on every single law we pass, from now on, we can put a provision in there prohibiting any state court from reviewing what we do for constitutionality?' Johnson asked.
Hughes said the Legislature would have to decide 'whether that was a good policy on a given bill' and said the laws can still be challenged in federal court. The U.S. Supreme Court, part of the federal court system, is the final arbiter of questions on the U.S. Constitution.
Johnson also noted the bill allows lawsuits to be brought against an abortion provider up to six years after an alleged violation. Johnson said he had never seen a tort law with such a long statute of limitations, and Hughes acknowledged the typical limit is two years.
On Wednesday, ahead of a vote for final passage, Johnson warned the bill would have far-reaching consequences.
"There will come a day when different people are in power who do not share your agenda, social or otherwise, and at that moment, you are going to wish that you hadn't torn down the walls of government in order to get your way," he said. "That's what this bill does."
In response, Hughes went back to his intent for the legislation.
"There is a person who is most affected by this bill, and no one, none of our learned friends, said a word about her," Hughes said Wednesday night. "And I'm speaking about that little unborn baby growing inside her mother's womb... I cannot, we cannot, forget about her."
The version of SB 2880 that passed out of the Senate is around 6,600 words long, about 30% shorter than the draft proposal Hughes introduced — and substantially different. The introduced version would have allowed private citizens to sue people who help pregnant Texans travel out-of-state for abortions, and it would have authorized Texas' attorney general to seek criminal charges against abortion providers if a local district attorney declines to pursue them. Those provisions are no longer included in the approved proposal.
The House version of the bill was the subject of passionate testimony Friday before the House State Affairs Committee. Texans submitted 230 pages' worth of public comments on HB 5510 by Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach.
One Texan testified that she was raped as a child and said the bill would have criminalized her mother, who helped her terminate the pregnancy when she was 8 years old. Texas' abortion laws do not have exceptions for rape, incest or fatal fetal anomalies.
'There are many survivors of childhood sexual assault, like myself, who have (sought) an abortion,' said Yaneth Flores, who testified on behalf of AVOW Texas, an abortion rights advocacy group. 'Rep. Leach, I am concerned that you are more interested in prosecuting my mother in that instance than my rapist.'
Flores called the bill a 'complete overreach.'
'Texas' abortion ban has not made the need (for abortions) go away,' she said. 'It has only made accessing care a difficult endeavor.'
More: Texans share emotional testimony on bills to further restrict abortion pills, travel
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas Senate passes sweeping abortion pill crackdown bill