Texas GOP push for sweeping anti-abortion law which includes century old criminal statute

In late March, women who had suffered severe pregnancy complications and were forced to leave Texas for care sat in the state Senate chamber and implored Texas lawmakers not to make such situations even worse, according to Bolts. Some had previously sued the state over its abortion bans, after being denied needed medical care in Texas. Devastating fetal diagnoses—one woman learned that the fetus was developing without a skull and would not survive, another was told that severe complications with one developing twin threatened her life and the life of her other healthy twin—left some scrambling to get over the state line. 

But instead of expanding medical exceptions to the state’s abortion bans in order to protect people in these circumstances, the women said, measures being pushed by Texas Republicans threatened to further criminalize them and their loved ones. 

The senators had been hearing testimony on abortion legislation, including a bill that purported to clarify the narrow medical exceptions in Texas abortion bans, following reports of deadly delays in care due to the vague language and penalties of up to life in prison for doctors who violate them. For weeks, that bill, Senate Bill 31, dominated advocacy efforts and headlines. This was in part because the bipartisan measure, deemed a priority bill by even the staunchest anti-abortion lawmakers, contained what some called a “Trojan Horse” provision: By including an early 20th-century, pre-Roe abortion law among the several abortion bans that SB 31 amended, critics said the bill could help resurrect the century-old abortion ban that would allow for criminalizing pregnant people seeking abortions, along with anyone who helps them get the procedure, even if it’s out of state. Eventually, the bill’s authors agreed to add language clarifying that the legislation was neutral on this issue, and it passed the Texas Senate last week. 

Yet Texas Republicans have at the same time been pushing forward another sweeping anti-abortion bill, Senate Bill 2880, which also includes language that could be used to enforce the same pre-Roe ban, often called the 1925 law. 

“This is a backdoor effort to fully reinstate the 1925 law,” Houston-area Democratic Senator Carol Alvarado said last week, just before SB 2880 also passed the full Senate. “It is a vote to criminalize women, trap them within the borders of Texas, and to threaten anyone who tries to help them, regardless of whether the abortion occurs legally in another state.” This includes situations where the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest, or where the fetus has an anomaly that means it will not survive—none of which are an exception under Texas law. 

Multiple Texas attorneys who specialize in reproductive health told Bolts that SB 2880 and its inclusion of language amending the state’s century-old abortion law could constitute an unprecedented step toward the sweeping criminalization of abortion in a state that already has some of the strictest abortion laws in the country. The measure, billed as an effort to crack down on abortion medication following an influx of the pills into the state via telemedicine, would allow anyone to sue individuals or companies who prescribe, manufacture, transport, or distribute abortion pills to a Texas resident, in exchange for a $100,000 reward. The bill would also empower people to bring wrongful death lawsuits following an abortion, and give new powers to the Texas Attorney General to enforce the state’s abortion bans, including the 1925 ban.

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