6.24.24 – Texas Tribune
“Now 5 Abortions a Month in TX, 2 Yrs. Ago 4,400 a Month”
By Eleanor Klibanoff
[COMMENTS FROM DONNA GARNER: Please notice that supporters of abortion such as the Texas Tribune never seem to mention the merits of ADOPTION.
According to the latest U. S. statistics, there are around 2,000,000 couples who are anxiously waiting and praying to adopt a child, many of them saying they will gladly adopt a child with or without a disability.
Why don’t the Texas Tribune and the other pro-abortionists build up the merits of adoption instead of trying to vilify those people who support life?
Also, whatever happened to the message of abstinence-before-marriage? People are not savages who cannot control their emotions through self-discipline? Teens do not have to give into their hormones.
Rearing a child in a two-parent family has always been one of the best ways to build a strong and economically sound society. Where is that message in America today?]
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Excerpts from this article:
Texas averages five abortions a month after Dobbs | The Texas Tribune
Texas, with 30 million residents and 10% of the women of reproductive age in the nation, used to see about 4,400 abortions a month.
Now, five.
State data, which is available only through January 2024, shows some months, no abortions were performed at all…
The drop in abortions in Texas is so large it’s difficult to visualize in numbers: a 99.89% decline...
But two years after the June 2022 Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, those abortions tell us a lot about how Texas’ laws are working — exactly as designed…
But since the Dobbs decision, much of the focus of the courts, the legislature, the media and advocates has narrowed in on one aspect — abortions for medically complicated pregnancies.
Performing an abortion in Texas is punishable by up to life in prison, unless, “in the exercise of reasonable medical judgment,” a doctor believes the pregnant patient is at risk of death or “substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”
LIFE OF THE MOTHER ISSUE
This “life of the mother” exception, as it is often called, is supposed to allow doctors to perform an abortion when medically necessary…
The fact that some women are getting abortions under this exception is proof enough for many anti-abortion groups that it is working…
“We can see that there are doctors in Texas who clearly understand that the law allows them to intervene to save a woman's life,” said Amy O’Donnell with Texas Alliance for Life. “Not a single woman has lost their life, and no doctor has faced any kind of prosecution, lost their medical license or faced any penalties.”
…“Our law allowed that doctor to intervene sooner, and so that's not an issue with the law,” O’Donnell said. “ …
“Given the nature of plaintiffs’ past experiences, it is understandable that they are seeking to place blame,” assistant attorney general Amy Pletscher said at the hearing. “But the blame directed at defendants is misplaced. Rather, plaintiffs sustained their alleged injuries as a direct result of their own medical providers failing them.”
TEXAS SUPREME COURT RULING
Last month, the Texas Supreme Court rejected Zurawski v. Texas, and further endorsed this view.
“A physician who tells a patient, ‘Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,’ and in the same breath states ‘but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances’ is simply wrong in that legal assessment,” the court wrote in its May 31 opinion.
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled, in this case but more explicitly in an earlier case, that the law doesn’t require doctors to wait until a pregnant patient is “within an inch of death or her bodily impairment is fully manifest or practically irreversible.” A doctor can act before the harm to the mother is imminent, the court ruled.
But state data shows that 88 of the 90 abortions performed in the 18 months for which data is available happened because there was a medical emergency, as well as being necessary to preserve the health of the patient…
When an Austin district judge ruled 31-year-old Kate Cox could terminate her nonviable pregnancy, Attorney General Ken Paxton sent letters to Houston hospitals telling them he would pursue legal action if they allowed Cox to have an abortion on their premises. The Texas Supreme Court later ruled Cox did not qualify for an abortion.
…Paxton also sued the federal government for reminding emergency rooms of their obligation to stabilize patients experiencing a medical emergency, even if stabilization requires an abortion. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Texas; the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule any day on a related case out of Idaho that could impact that ruling.
Even while it upheld the state law on abortions as it applied to complicated pregnancies, the Texas Supreme Court conceded that more clarity is needed. Late last year, justices asked the Texas Medical Board, the state licensing agency, to issue clearer guidance to doctors to help them interpret the laws and feel more confident performing medically necessary abortions…
On Friday, the board adopted a slightly modified version of their proposed rule.
ABORTIONISTS FLEEING TO OTHER STATES
…More than 35,000 Texans went to another state to get an abortion in 2023, compared to just 2,400 in 2019, according to a study from the Guttmacher Institute. They primarily traveled to New Mexico, the only state bordering Texas that still allows abortion. Almost three-quarters of abortions there in 2023 were provided to out-of-state residents. Several clinics that used to operate in Texas have set up shop over the border in New Mexico.
ABORTION PILLS
And a countless number of Texans have ended pregnancies without ever leaving the state, thanks to widespread access to medication abortions, pills [e.g., Mifepristone] that induce abortion and are often obtained through telehealth appointments with out-of-state providers.
While prescribing and mailing abortion-inducing drugs is illegal in Texas, at least half a dozen states have passed so-called “shield laws” that aim to protect healthcare providers who prescribe abortion pills to patients in Texas and other restrictive states…
Frustrated by this workaround, anti-abortion activists have focused on restricting out-of-state travel and access to abortion-inducing medications …
TEXANS TRYING TO STOP ABORTIONS
Several small towns, as well as Lubbock County, have passed a legally dubious ordinance that tries to prevent people from using local roads to transport anyone out-of-state for an abortion. …the ordinance which is enforced through private civil lawsuits…
Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general responsible for many of the most aggressive conservative legal arguments in recent years, has taken things a step further. Mitchell has filed legal petitions seeking to depose women who terminated their pregnancies outside of Texas, as well as groups that fund out-of-state abortions for Texans. None of those petitions has yet resulted in depositions.
Mitchell has also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against three women who he says helped a friend obtain and take abortion-inducing drugs...
Other conservative groups filed a lawsuit seeking to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval for mifepristone, one of two drugs taken together to terminate a pregnancy.
THE QUESTION OF “STANDING”
While U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the only federal judge in Amarillo, granted their petition, the Supreme Court recently overturned it, ruling that the doctors did not have standing to bring the suit.
Mifepristone remains approved, but the case may not be over…
[I believe soon a case will be filed in which a “person of standing” – someone who has personally experienced the damaging effects of mifepristone -- will come before the Supreme Court, and the Justices will get to focus on the real issue at stake.]
GOING FORWARD
.. Early fertility data for Texas shows Hispanic women are seeing the greatest increase in births, and teen pregnancy has ticked up for the first time in decades…
Last legislative session, in a moment of bipartisan agreement motivated by the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the state extended health care coverage for poor mothers to one year postpartum, and eliminated the sales tax on diapers. It has invested in crisis pregnancy centers to give supplies to new moms.
…Texas has continued to march steadily to the right, helped by voters who are more focused on issues like the border and the economy.
Two years after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Texas voters say abortion is only the sixth most important issue facing the state.