State Legislature Looks To End Legal Abortion In Texas

DALLAS, TX —New and evermore restrictive regulations on abortions will likely become Texas law in the next few hours.

Gov. Greg Abbott has already said he "can't wait" to sign the legislation passed Thursday by the Senate. The bill would outlaw terminating pregnancies as early as six weeks into gestation. It also paves the way for private citizens to sue providers who they suspect are in violation of the new provision.

The proposal already has its own nickname, "The Heartbeat Bill," so dubbed because it outlaws abortion at the first detection of a heartbeat. Not many men outside the medical community might know this, but that's around the six-week marker — often before the woman carrying a child has any notion she might be pregnant.

The measure could be on Abbott's desk today.

In a world dominated by the Capitol Riot, the BLM movement and Fake News vs. The Big Lie, abortion remains the most highly charged of third rails in American politics. The very term sends parties both pro and con scurrying for words that carry less emotion, like "Right to Life" and "A Woman's Right to Choose."

So what does this almost-law add to the conversation?

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Like recent bills to prevent homeless encampments across the state, what it really does is send the women of Texas across state lines for the family counseling and treatment they seek. That adds expense to what's already considerable trauma.

"Abortion restrictions may put a woman’s physical and emotional safety at risk," says an independent study group called the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. "Limited abortion access may result in more women being unable to terminate unwanted pregnancies, keeping them in contact with violent partners."

The late Texas comic Bill Hicks put Right to Lifers in his crosshairs in one of his routines. He'd say that if people were really that opposed to death, they shouldn't block health clinics. They should lock arms around cemeteries. His point? That these laws ensure that more unloved and unwanted babies reach full term — at which point the very conservatives who insisted on their birth wash their hands of responsibility.

While Bill Clinton was campaigning for the presidency, he borrowed a phrase from centrists that seemed to stake out a compassionate middle ground: "to make abortions safe — and rare." This bill puts that in the rearview mirror and roadblocks aplenty for women who oftentimes are facing the loneliest and most agonizing moments of their lives.

This is one of those moments when the phrase "thoughts and prayers" comes to mind. But it's clear that women facing unwanted or medically precarious pregnancies are going to need more than that.

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