Latest news with #TexasPoliticsProject
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Texas lawmakers voted to ban consumable THC products. Will Gov. Greg Abbott sign — or veto — the bill?
Gov. Greg Abbott is facing intense political pressure over a bill that would ban products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, as hemp industry leaders mount a full-court press urging the governor to veto the measure while Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and his allies urge Abbott to sign it into law. The issue has sparked backlash from both sides of the aisle, including from conservatives ordinarily supportive of Patrick's hardline agenda. An April statewide survey by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that 55% of Republicans believe Texas' marijuana and cannabis laws should be less strict or left as they are now, compared to 40% who said they should be stricter. Less than one-third of voters of all political persuasions said the state should stiffen its THC laws. Yet, should he break out the veto pen, Abbott would likely incur the wrath of Patrick, the powerful Senate leader who made the ban one of his top priorities, calling THC-infused products — such as gummies, beverages and vapes — a 'poison in our public.' In a sign of the intense fallout since lawmakers approved the ban, Patrick called a news conference last week to renew his criticism of the hemp industry and the products they are pushing, which he said are designed to appeal to children. Patrick, brandishing a THC-infused lollipop and standing before a table covered in cannabis products, said, 'You might go into a store and buy 'em and not even know that you're getting your kid high on drugs and hooked for life.' The hemp industry supported an alternative to the ban that would have restricted THC products to Texans 21 and older, barred sales within a certain distance of schools and outlawed marketing the products in ways that are 'attractive to children,' which they said would make people less likely to develop a dependency on the drug. Asked if he was calling the news conference over concerns about an Abbott veto, Patrick said he was 'not worried about the governor.' 'I'm worried about the pressure on the media and the general public to try to keep this going in some way and bring it back,' Patrick said, adding, 'I'm not going to speak for the governor. He will do what he is going to do. I have total confidence in the governor.' Meanwhile, as the Legislature prepared to gavel out for the session on Monday, hemp industry leaders held their own news conference to call for Abbott to veto the bill — underscoring the competing pressures now facing the governor. Abbott has three options for how to handle the THC ban, known as Senate Bill 3. He has 20 days after the end of the session to sign or veto the measure. If he does neither, it will become law without his signature. An Abbott spokesperson declined Monday to say what he would do, saying only that the governor 'will thoughtfully review any legislation sent to his desk.' On Monday, the Texas Hemp Business Council reported that it delivered 5,000 letters to Abbott's office, along with a petition signed by some 120,000 people, urging the governor to veto the bill. The group organized a news conference in which industry leaders, business owners and a sixth-generation Texan farmer — along with a pair of military veterans — blasted lawmakers who pushed the ban, accusing them of putting politics and power above sensible policy. Dave Walden, a Texas VFW senior vice commander who served multiple combat deployments in more than a decade with the U.S. Army, shared a story about how his life was saved by a veteran-founded company that makes THC gummies. The cannabis helps Walden manage the chronic pain and PTSD that's plagued him since he returned from service, he said. "I live with the scars that you can see and the ones that you can't and like thousands of us, I went through the government's solution: a never-ending parade of pills," Walden said. "Those drugs nearly destroyed me." Thanks to the legal, hemp-derived consumable products he found, Walden said that he has not touched an opioid since 2018. "THC gummies brought me back," he said. "Let's stop pretending this is about public safety. This is about control and veterans are caught in the crossfire." Industry leaders, meanwhile, tried to appeal to Abbott by arguing that a ban would hurt Texas' business-friendly reputation and weaken its border security by giving rise to a black market in place of legal dispensaries. State Sen. Charles Perry, the Lubbock Republican who authored the THC ban, said those businesses were 'forewarned,' when lawmakers approved 2019 legislation authorizing the sale of consumable hemp, that the measure was only intended to boost agriculture. 'If you're doing hemp that ultimately ended up as a Delta 8 or a Delta 10 [product], going forward, you're out of business,' Perry said. 'And you should be.' Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!
Associated Press
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
With the border quiet, Texas ponders spending another $6.5 billion on border security
Texas' massive, multibillion-dollar mission to reinforce its border with Mexico helped Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland hire two full-time deputies and three part-timers. It gave him the money to buy equipment and new vehicles. In the lawman's words, it 'kept us alive' as the number of illegal border crossings skyrocketed under the Biden administration to record highs. And Cleveland, who became sheriff after 26 years as a Border Patrol agent, still has needs. He said he hopes and prays to be able to hire more deputies. But he also has worries about the state plowing billions of more taxpayer dollars into border security as the border gets quieter and quieter — and President Donald Trump vows mass deportations of undocumented immigrants living throughout the country. 'With President Trump being in the White House, I would foresee the federal government spending more money. The state Legislature surely shouldn't have to spend that much more money,' he said in an interview. 'Why are we asking (for) that?' Three hundred and thirty-five miles east of Terrell County, state lawmakers and leaders in Austin are asking for just that. As the Legislature irons out the details of the state's spending plan for the next two years, $6.5 billion for border security has sailed through both chambers with little fanfare. Meanwhile, the number of arrests along the border has dwindled to a trickle and the federal government has begun expanding its immigration enforcement apparatus to deport as many people as Trump promised on the campaign trail. If approved, the appropriation would increase the tab for the state's border security spending to nearly $18 billion since 2021, when Gov. Greg Abbott began the state's own crackdown, Operation Lone Star, in response to the Biden administration's immigration policies. That new sum would be more than five times the $3.4 billion that state lawmakers spent on border security over the 14 preceding years, when lawmakers began regularly allocating money for border operations. 'It's hard to make the argument that the politics around immigration and the border have ever been especially preoccupied with good governance,' said Jim Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin. The project's December poll, after the presidential election, found that 45% of Texas voters felt the state was spending too little on border security. That number increased to 63% among only Republican voters. 'If you're trying to balance good governance and some semblance of fiscal responsibility with politics on this issue, as a Republican legislator or a Republican elected official, the politics are still weighing very heavily on that scale,' Henson said. At various points in the last four years, Abbott has said the state must maintain its presence — and spending — along the border until it achieved 'operational control' of the border. 'Texas will not stop until we gain full operational control of the border,' Abbott said in June when he welcomed troops to a new military base the state built in Eagle Pass. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last month that the nation is close to reaching that goal. U.S. Customs and Border Protection 'literally has almost 100% operational control (of) the border which means that our country is secure and that we know who's coming into this country,' Noem told NewsNation. In a statement, Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris noted that the state devoted money to border security before 2021. 'Gov. Abbott will continue working with the Legislature to determine appropriate funding levels,' Mahaleris said. 'This funding is critical to ensure Texas can continue working closely with President Trump and his administration to protect our state and nation.' State Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who is a lead writer of the state budget, also appeared open to the idea of redirecting the money currently earmarked for border security. She said she was closely monitoring illegal crossings and the flow of drugs and weapons with the governor's office, state leadership and state police 'in order to determine the appropriate level of state support required to fully secure the border and keep Texans safe.' In a statement to the Tribune, Huffman said Texas 'is undoubtedly benefiting from the Trump Administration's focus on reinstating security at our southern border. … It is essential that the state uses taxpayer funds prudently and in coordination with the federal government's ongoing efforts.' But it's not clear how much appetite there is to make a change to the state's recent multi-billion-dollar border commitment. During a budget debate in the House last week, Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson, unsuccessfully tried to shift the border security budget to give Texas teachers a pay increase. 'We could give you a trillion dollars, and you would still cry with this red meat nonsense,' Rodríguez Ramos said. A few weeks ago, State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, an Austin Democrat who serves on the upper chamber's border security committee, went to Del Rio to check out the state's military operations, the international port and Operation Lone Star staging. When she toured the Rio Grande, she said a tent set up to book people arrested under Operation Lone Star held a lone individual — a U.S. citizen from Texas accused of a crime, she said. Eckhardt said in an interview that the $6.5 billion currently being considered might not even cover the cost of some immigration-related proposals that lawmakers are now considering. She pointed to a potential prohibition on granting bail to undocumented immigrants accused of felonies — which could increase the costs for the local government if it is not allowed by the state to release the individual. 'We are shifting the cost of Trump's goal onto state and local taxes,' Eckhardt said. Selene Rodriguez, a border and immigration expert for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, said the state will always have a role to play in border security. But she would like more transparency when it comes to spending. 'I myself am a big proponent of increased public safety efforts because I believe that is one of the few legitimate roles of government,' Rodriguez said. 'But if you're going to do it, do it correctly. Line the pockets appropriately, and if you don't need 5,000 Guardsmen at the border maybe don't have them there.' At least two bills this session called for auditing Operation Lone Star. Both bills, one in each chamber, were referred to committee. As of mid-April, neither had received a hearing. ___ This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
With the border quiet, Texas ponders spending another $6.5 billion on border security
Texas' massive, multibillion-dollar mission to reinforce its border with Mexico helped Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland hire two full-time deputies and three part-timers. It gave him the money to buy equipment and new vehicles. In the lawman's words, it 'kept us alive' as the number of illegal border crossings skyrocketed under the Biden administration to record highs. And Cleveland, who became sheriff after 26 years as a Border Patrol agent, still has needs. He said he hopes and prays to be able to hire more deputies. But he also has worries about the state plowing billions of more taxpayer dollars into border security as the border gets quieter and quieter — and President Donald Trump vows mass deportations of undocumented immigrants living throughout the country. 'With President Trump being in the White House, I would foresee the federal government spending more money. The state Legislature surely shouldn't have to spend that much more money,' he said in an interview. 'Why are we asking (for) that?' Three hundred and thirty-five miles east of Terrell County, state lawmakers and leaders in Austin are asking for just that. As the Legislature irons out the details of the state's spending plan for the next two years, $6.5 billion for border security has sailed through both chambers with little fanfare. Meanwhile, the number of arrests along the border has dwindled to a trickle and the federal government has begun expanding its immigration enforcement apparatus to deport as many people as Trump promised on the campaign trail. If approved, the appropriation would increase the tab for the state's border security spending to nearly $18 billion since 2021, when Gov. Greg Abbott began the state's own crackdown, Operation Lone Star, in response to the Biden administration's immigration policies. That new sum would be more than five times the $3.4 billion that state lawmakers spent on border security over the 14 preceding years, when lawmakers began regularly allocating money for border operations. 'It's hard to make the argument that the politics around immigration and the border have ever been especially preoccupied with good governance,' said Jim Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin. The project's December poll, after the presidential election, found that 45% of Texas voters felt the state was spending too little on border security. That number increased to 63% among only Republican voters. 'If you're trying to balance good governance and some semblance of fiscal responsibility with politics on this issue, as a Republican legislator or a Republican elected official, the politics are still weighing very heavily on that scale,' Henson said. At various points in the last four years, Abbott has said the state must maintain its presence — and spending — along the border until it achieved 'operational control' of the border. 'Texas will not stop until we gain full operational control of the border,' Abbott said in June when he welcomed troops to a new military base the state built in Eagle Pass. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last month that the nation is close to reaching that goal. U.S. Customs and Border Protection 'literally has almost 100% operational control (of) the border which means that our country is secure and that we know who's coming into this country,' Noem told NewsNation. In a statement, Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris noted that the state devoted money to border security before 2021. 'Gov. Abbott will continue working with the Legislature to determine appropriate funding levels,' Mahaleris said. 'This funding is critical to ensure Texas can continue working closely with President Trump and his administration to protect our state and nation." State Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who is a lead writer of the state budget, also appeared open to the idea of redirecting the money currently earmarked for border security. She said she was closely monitoring illegal crossings and the flow of drugs and weapons with the governor's office, state leadership and state police 'in order to determine the appropriate level of state support required to fully secure the border and keep Texans safe.' In a statement to the Tribune, Huffman said Texas 'is undoubtedly benefiting from the Trump Administration's focus on reinstating security at our southern border. … It is essential that the state uses taxpayer funds prudently and in coordination with the federal government's ongoing efforts.' But it's not clear how much appetite there is to make a change to the state's recent multi-billion-dollar border commitment. During a budget debate in the House last week, Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson, unsuccessfully tried to shift the border security budget to give Texas teachers a pay increase. 'We could give you a trillion dollars, and you would still cry with this red meat nonsense,' Rodríguez Ramos said. A few weeks ago, State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, an Austin Democrat who serves on the upper chamber's border security committee, went to Del Rio to check out the state's military operations, the international port and Operation Lone Star staging. When she toured the Rio Grande, she said a tent set up to book people arrested under Operation Lone Star held a lone individual — a U.S. citizen from Texas accused of a crime, she said. Eckhardt said in an interview that the $6.5 billion currently being considered might not even cover the cost of some immigration-related proposals that lawmakers are now considering. She pointed to a potential prohibition on granting bail to undocumented immigrants accused of felonies — which could increase the costs for the local government if it is not allowed by the state to release the individual. 'We are shifting the cost of Trump's goal onto state and local taxes,' Eckhardt said. Selene Rodriguez, a border and immigration expert for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, said the state will always have a role to play in border security. But she would like more transparency when it comes to spending. 'I myself am a big proponent of increased public safety efforts because I believe that is one of the few legitimate roles of government,' Rodriguez said. 'But if you're going to do it, do it correctly. Line the pockets appropriately, and if you don't need 5,000 Guardsmen at the border maybe don't have them there.' At least two bills this session called for auditing Operation Lone Star. Both bills, one in each chamber, were referred to committee. As of mid-April, neither had received a hearing. Disclosure: The Texas Public Policy Foundation has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Tickets are on sale now for the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Texas' breakout ideas and politics event happening Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin. Get tickets before May 1 and save big! TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘A lot of candidates and a lot of money': Early look at Texas's 2026 races
AUSTIN (Nexstar)- Texas elections are taking a turn in 2026. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday he will challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R- Texas, in next year's midterm elections. This GOP-versus-GOP clash promises to be among the most heated and expensive Republican primaries in the country and in recent Texas history. Cornyn has served in the Senior Republican Senate seat for 22 years. Paxton, the third-term attorney general, survived a bipartisan impeachment with support from President Donald Trump and other major conservative players. In the Texas GOP Senate primary, Paxton and Cornyn trade early attacks Cornyn has never lost an election in Texas or been forced to a runoff by any of his same party opponents. His only political loss occurred when he ran for Senate majority leader in November but despite this, he has remained heavily involved in the Republican party. He has taken on new committee assignments and put himself on several key panels that will oversee Trump's agenda. Paxton, on the other hand, has been a close ally of Trump after waging an unsuccessful legal challenge to Trump's loss in key battleground states during the 2020 election. Trump endorsed Paxton in the 2022 attorney general's race and defended him when he was impeached in 2023 for allegedly accepting bribes and abusing the power of his office. Paxton doesn't have to give up his seat to run against Cornyn but his congressional bid means he can't run for reelection as attorney general. With Paxton, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick all winning their seats back in the 2014 election, the 2026 attorney general race will be the largest statewide race without an incumbent in over a decade. Judge awards $6.6 million to whistleblowers who reported Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to FBI 'If you're a Republican, there's a lot of pent up demand out there among people that have wanted to move up and have had nowhere to go because incumbents have been running for reelection, and those incumbents are largely pretty formidable,' Texas Politics Project Director Jim Henson said. 'There's going to be a lot of candidates and a lot of money brought to bear in [the Attorney General and U.S. Senate] races.' Former U.S. Attorney John Bash is the first to announce his run to replace Paxton's seat. Bash previously worked as a federal prosecutor for the Western District of Texas until 2020, and served as a special assistant to President Donald Trump during his first term. Since resigning as a government attorney, he has taken on cases such as defending Musk in a defamation case. As a federal prosecutor, Bash led the state's cases against the perpetrator of the 2018 Austin porch bombings, who killed two people, and the corruption case against former state Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, who was found guilty in 2018 for his role in a Ponzi scheme. Bash said in a statement on social media he's running because Texas needs 'the toughest, most battle-tested attorney to lead the fight to keep our communities safe, defend our constitutional rights, and make sure Texas remains a leader in innovation and growth.'' Other state leaders are working to remain in their seats. Patrick has officially announced his campaign for his 2026 reelection on Friday. Patrick has presided over the Senate for more than 10 years. If Patrick wins in 2026, it would make him the second-longest serving lieutenant governor in Texas history. 'Are you delusional?' 2026 Texas Senate race heats up 'This Legislative Session we have already passed the most conservative agenda in Texas history – including school choice, property tax relief, investing in our water infrastructure, our electric grid, banning non-citizens from voting, and returning prayer and the Ten Commandments to our public schools,' Patrick said in his reelection campaign announcement on April 11. He is not alone. Patrick also shared in his announcement that Trump has endorsed his election campaign. 'In his next Term, Dan will fight tirelessly alongside of us to Secure the Border, Stop Migrant Crime, Grow the Economy, Cut Taxes and Regulations, Champion School Choice, Support our Great Military/Vets, Restore American Energy DOMINANCE, and Strongly Protect our always under siege Second Amendment,' Trump wrote on Truth Social. Despite announcing his campaign plans, Patrick stressed that his focus remains on completing the legislative session's priorities. 'The campaign will begin soon enough, but with seven weeks still to go in the Legislative Session, my focus remains on the work to be done at the Capitol for the people of Texas,' he said. In the meantime, Abbott has yet to announce his plans for reelection. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Texas Republican lawmakers unwilling to change abortion laws to address doomed pregnancies
For the first time since Texas banned nearly all abortions, Republican lawmakers are considering tweaking the language of the law to protect the lives of pregnant women. But this much-lauded bipartisan effort will offer no reprieve for women carrying doomed pregnancies diagnosed with lethal fetal abnormalities. At a House committee meeting this week, Austin resident Taylor Edwards tried to convey how it felt to carry a pregnancy with no chance of survival. She learned at 17 weeks that her much-wanted pregnancy was developing in such a way that her daughter's 'brain was coming out of the back of a hole in her skull,' Edwards said. For years, abortions for a 'severe and irreversible abnormality' were allowed at any point in pregnancy in Texas. But that exception was yanked away in 2021, when Texas started down the path of banning all abortions except those to save the life of the pregnant patient. 'Our so-called representatives instead prefer to force these women to carry to term a baby who would never survive outside the womb,' Edwards said, 'and allow a mother and child to suffer agonies of a life that's not meant to be lived for the sake of their own comfort.' Almost three-quarters of Texas voters, and 63% of Republicans, believe abortion should be legal in cases where 'there is a strong chance of a serious birth defect,' according to a Texas Politics Project poll. [Bipartisan support for Texas bill clarifying when doctors can perform an abortion shows early cracks] But Republican lawmakers have shown no willingness to expand the abortion law to include these cases. Even this effort to clarify the existing exceptions required strict negotiations with anti-abortion groups to ensure there was no inadvertent widening of access. At the hearing Monday, Fort Worth Democrat Rep. Nicole Collier said she was sympathetic to stories like Edwards, and wished there could be an exception for these cases. 'But the way we're made up, the makeup of the body, this is what we have,' she said. Rep. Jolanda Jones, a Houston Democrat, was more straightforward about the odds of expanding abortion access, for these or other cases. 'I bet people in Hell want cold water,' she said. 'But they don't have it.' Kaitlyn Kash's first pregnancy was 'textbook,' she said. So when the Austin-area got pregnant again in 2021, she expected a similarly standard journey. But at her 13-week anatomy scan, her doctor noticed that the fetus' limbs were extremely underdeveloped. 'That's not something you usually measure at that appointment,' she told The Texas Tribune. 'That's how severe it was, they could see it that early.' A maternal-fetal medicine specialist diagnosed her baby with osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bones. Kash risked breaking the baby's developing bones every time she leaned over, she said. 'The baby would obviously have a very rough delivery, and then if the baby survived, most likely in these cases that are so extreme, the rib cage will not develop large enough to support lung function,' she said. 'The baby would suffocate after being born without extreme medical intervention.' Lethal fetal abnormality is a term used to describe a range of diagnoses, conditions and malformations that can be diagnosed before birth that will, with reasonable certainty, result in a non-viable pregnancy or death shortly after birth. Congenital abnormalities affect 2 to 3% of pregnancies worldwide, although not all of those diagnoses are so severe as to be fatal. Kash has worked in the maternal health field, so she knew she couldn't get an abortion in Texas. But so many other people in her life assumed there would be a carve-out for cases like hers. Her father told her to 'go get an exception,' and having to repeatedly explain why she didn't qualify for this medical care in-state only exacerbated her grief. One in four Texas women of reproductive age believe the law allows for abortions in cases of lethal fetal anomalies, a March 2024 survey found. Many don't find out the nuances of the law until they need to call on it themselves. Lauren Hall wasn't thinking about the state's abortion laws when she got pregnant in 2022. But she got very familiar, very fast after learning that her fetus was developing without a skull. Her doctor told Hall that she would likely miscarry, deliver a stillborn, or her daughter, whom she'd named Amelia, would live mere hours. 'I knew the best case scenario was that I would miscarry, because otherwise I'd be carrying to full term just for my baby to die,' she told the Tribune. 'But I was also worried about miscarrying, because we've seen now stories of women who start to miscarry and were left to go septic with no intervention, and even die. It was putting me at risk either way.' Pregnancy is not a benign condition, especially in a state like Texas, where maternal mortality and morbidity is on the rise, said Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Colorado. Pregnant women can develop preeclampsia, are at high risk of hemorrhage, and often must undergo physically intensive surgery to deliver. These are risks many women are willing to take to have children, but, she said, 'when we talk about lethal anomalies, that is a risk without any benefit.' Some fetal anomalies increase the risk to the pregnant patient — trisomy 13, for example, increases the risk of preeclampsia, and since anencephalic fetuses can't swallow, there is often a build-up of fluid that can lead to placental abruption and hemorrhage, medical experts told the Tribune. If there is an extreme threat to the pregnant patient's life, they may qualify for an abortion under the law. But there is no exception for mental distress, so when Hall felt herself crumbling under the grief of carrying this pregnancy to term, she got on an airplane and traveled to Washington state to have an abortion. In late 2023, Kate Cox, a Dallas mother of two, tested the legal limits of these exceptions as they apply to lethal fetal anomalies. After receiving a diagnosis of full Trisomy 18, a lethal chromosomal anomaly, she sued for the right to terminate her pregnancy. Her doctor attested that she needed the abortion to protect her health and future fertility, and a judge granted the abortion. Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed to the Texas Supreme Court and, in the meantime, threatened three Houston-area hospitals with fines and criminal charges if they allowed the abortion to take place at their facilities. The Texas Supreme Court barred Cox from having an abortion, saying that 'some difficulties in pregnancy … even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses.' Cox traveled out of state to terminate her pregnancy. Anti-abortion groups argue these diagnoses are not always a death sentence, and doctors are often too quick to offer abortion as an option. 'Abortion is going out of your way and causing the death of the child,' said John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life. 'That is not a treatment for a disability. That is not a treatment for a mom. That's unnecessary.' Their solution is to better fund and raise awareness about perinatal palliative care, programs that support families as they navigate a life-limiting or lethal fetal diagnosis. Texas Right to Life has endorsed two bills that would require health care providers to offer patients information about these programs after they receive a lethal fetal diagnosis. These programs offer families care coordination between medical teams, emotional and spiritual guidance, childbirth planning that takes into account the patient's wishes around life-extending measures, and bereavement support. Perinatal palliative care is a wonderful option for families that choose to continue a pregnancy despite a lethal fetal anomaly, said Dr. Justin Lappen, an Ohio maternal-fetal medicine specialist who chairs the Reproductive Health Advisory Group at the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine. But it's not a substitute for abortion access for families that want to make the choice to terminate instead, he said. 'Sometimes another mechanism for compassionate care is to provide abortion care, rather than going the perinatal palliative care route,' he said. 'For pregnant patients facing these really significant diagnoses, It's critically important … to have that choice, and it shouldn't be taken away.' For now, at least, perinatal palliative care is the only path available to Texans with lethal fetal diagnoses who can't leave the state. Lawmakers have made it extremely clear that there will be no effort to expand access in the push to clarify the existing exceptions. Rep. Charlie Geren, the Fort Worth Republican who is carrying the clarifying bill in the House, said at the hearing that he wished they were adding an exception for lethal fetal anomalies. 'But that's not what this bill is about,' he said. Tickets are on sale now for the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Texas' breakout ideas and politics event happening Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin. Get tickets before May 1 and save big! TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
