Let me begin by stating that I am definitely not an advocate for abortions. But I am a pragmatist. State Representative Tony Tinderholt, (R) Arlington, has introduced Texas House Bill 896 which would allow women who obtained abortions and medical professionals who performed the procedures to be charged with capital murder. If this bill were to become law, it would lead to the death of the Texas republican Party.
But West Texans for Life considers HB 896 the number one bill this session. Jim Baxa, president of the pro-life organization, says:
“We say as pro-lifers that we believe abortion is murder and this bill allows us to prove that we believe that. If we believe that abortion is murder, we recognize that we better charge everyone involved in that crime.”
Good for Baxa. He’s standing up for his convictions. But he and his fellow West Texans for Life fail to take into account how HB 896 would affect the Texas GOP were it to become law. While it can be argued that an abortion constitutes the murder of a child, Tinderholt’s bill would be a death penalty for the Republican Party.
Let’s take a look at who is getting abortions. It’s not poor Latinos or poor blacks. And it’s not trailer trash whites. The women who are getting abortions are from the middle and upper class. And even though the Catholic Church firmly opposes abortions, many of the women who abort their children are Catholics.
The women who obtain abortions and the medical professionals who perform them are people who go to the polls and vote. Guess which party they will vote for. And that’s not all. Many of those opposed to abortions would find the law proposed by Tinderholt so abhorrent that they might vote for Democrats too.
Texas abortion laws can be strengthened, but not in a crazy way that calls for the death penalty. Should Tinderjolt’s bill become law, we would soon see all state offices occupied by Democrats, both Texas senators would be Democrats, and most Texas members of Congress would be Democrats.
Even if Gov. Abbott were crazy enough to sign Tinderholt’s crazy bill, the new law would be tied up in the courts for years.
Fortunately for the Republican Party, State Representative Jeff Leach, chairman of the Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee, has announced that while he would hear any bill requested by a member of the legislature, he would not allow a bill out of committee that “targets the woman with either civil or criminal liability.”
Perhaps the State of Texas and the Republican Party would be better served if Rep. Tinderholt were to take a prolonged vacation at Spirit Rock meditation retreat.
Yawn. Howie you should write for the Texas Tribune. This bill is the exact opposite of what several states are passing currently. That being letting a perfectly formed and delivered or about to be delivered child be killed because the mother or her doctor decide they don’t want it. Current law under Chapter 19.06 reads:
Sec. 19.06. APPLICABILITY TO CERTAIN CONDUCT. This chapter does not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is:
(1) conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child;
(2) a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent, if the death of the unborn child was the intended result of the procedure;
(3) a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent as part of an assisted reproduction as defined by Section 160.102, Family Code; or
(4) the dispensation of a drug in accordance with law or administration of a drug prescribed in accordance with law.
That’s pretty much boiler plate language in most state of the 50 state’s laws to accommodate federal law as decided by the supreme court. But now some states are letting mothers decide after the baby is born. Medical procedures to get around the delivery aspect resort to killing the baby as it is being born or just before. Obama sponsored a bill as an Illinois senator to allow a baby that survived abortion to die and now we see that standard being pushed by democrats across the nation. He offered that bill to address the fact that babies were being born alive even after an attempted abortion.
So along comes a pro-life group that wants to define life beginning at conception instead whenever a mother or her doctor decides it does. If we leave the law as written then a clear reading should allow a mother to decide at any time when to kill her baby, just like Virginia tried to pass, just like NY did pass and other states are moving toward. Where would you stand if this bill defined life starting at the beginning of the 3rd trimester? There are many adults walking around that didn’t get that far in gestation that medicine saved. Beginning of 2nd trimester?
It is no longer possible to maintain the status quo because a segment of our population will not allow it. I have no problem in pushing back in this case.
Dan, I don’t have a problem with defining life as beginning at conception. But I do have a problem with how you punish women who obtain an abortion and the medical professionals that perform an abortion. Surely you don’t support Tinderholt’s crazy death penalty bill. If you do, then you’ve lost your ever loving mind.
Danman: Tell me what state lets a parent “abort” a child after it’s born. Give me the citation to the statute authorizing that so I can look it up.
Let me save you some time. There isn’t one. Once a child is born, killing it or letting it die is murder in every state.
And, if you read HB 896, you would not only see that it changes section 19.06 of the Penal Code to remove the inapplicability of the murder statue in abortions, it even seems to make it a murder to destroy a fertilized egg left over from in vitro fertilization.
As you may or may not know, in in vitro fertilizations, numerous eggs are harvested and fertilized but only one or a few will be implanted in the mother. Under HB 896, those left over fertilized eggs would have to be implanted in someone. Destroying them would be murder.
And you ought to read the Legislative Budget Board’s analysis. The LBB flatly says that HB 896 would outlaw abortion in Texas regardless of any contrary federal laws or court decisions. It includes the following provision:
SECTIONA10. Any federal law, executive order, or court
decision that purports to supersede, stay, or overrule this Act is
in violation of the Texas Constitution and the United States
Constitution and is therefore void. The State of Texas, a political
subdivision of this state, and any agent of this state or a
political subdivision of this state may, but is not required to,
enter an appearance, special or otherwise, in any federal suit
challenging this Act.
The bill is nuts. But for some of my lawyer colleagues, it will be a boon. As soon as it is passed and signed into law, the lawsuit will hit in federal district court. When it’s all said and done, the law will be declared unconstitutional. Then they will file for attorneys fees and get them A bunch of civil rights lawyers will be driving new BMWs and spending weekends on their new boats at the expense of the Texas taxpayer.
As for a Texas law declaring a federal law or court decision void, aside from the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution, we fought a war about federal supremacy between 1861 and 1865, The feds won.
Dan: a little friendly suggestion, before you say a bill in the legislature does this or does not to that, read the bill. They’re available on the internet for free.
Oh, Danman, two other little things that bill would do if it ever passed.
First, it would make it a death penalty offense to abort a child to save the life of the mother even if it was a medical certainity that the pregnancy would cause the mother to die before the fetus was viable.
Second, it could make it a five years in prison to life case if a woman drank alcohol or smoked during pregnancy or if she deliberately didn’t do the exercises prescribed by her doctor or did anything else that could harm the fetus. It would constitute an attempted capital murder.
Representative Tinderholt either is barking mad, doesn’t know what this bill would do or he filed it just to score some political points with his supporters.
If we are so worried about compromising in order to win elections, then what is the point of winning those elections. Do what is right and people will ultimately be stirred to join the party. Continue to compromise, and people won’t care about voting for you.
Just as the pro-life supporters are finally beginning to win some battles. Just when the pro-abortion crowd has finally overplayed their hand and come out as the callous baby butchers that we all knew them for. . . .
Now we have to deal with lunatics from the other end who are doing their best to convince folks in the middle that the pro-life movement is as bat-shit crazy as the pro-infanticide folks on the other side. “You got an abortion, now you must die!”
Yeah, that’s gonna be a great message on election day. Idiots. . . .
Fat, you are spot on! I could not have said it any better.
Just wanted to correct one little error in this piece.
“Let’s take a look at who is getting abortions. It’s not poor Latinos or poor blacks. And it’s not trailer trash whites. The women who are getting abortions are from the middle and upper class.”
Most recent data shows the typical abortion recipieent in Texas is a 22-year old single Hispanic woman, either with no children or with one child, who is right about at the poverty line. She gets a surgical abortion prior to 8 weeks gestation.
And as I’ve tried to convince some of my friends who support this bill AND the provisions in it that would allow the death penalty, this is terrible, terrible optics. It’s not surprising that this bill made national headlines, all of them very negative.
When pushed about executing women who had abortions, the supporters of HB896 say things like, “oh, no prosecutor would ever charge it that way, and even if they did, no judge or jury would impose the death penalty.”
If you trust that someone is never going to fire a gun, why load it before handing it to them?
Jeff, I stand corrected.
According to the Guttmacher Institute:
Abortions in the U.S.
75% were economically disadvantaged
39% were white
28% were black
25% were Hispanic
24% were Catholic
6.0% were performed in Texas
According to the Texas Department of State Health Services:
Abortions in Texas
32% were white
25% were black
38% were Hispanic
Since the national stats indicate 75% of women getting abortions were poor, there is no reason to believe that number would be significantly different for Texas.
Although these stats contradict what I wrote, despite my bad it does not change how Texas voters will react if Tinderholt’s crazy bill were to be enacted into law.
Hopefully Chairman Dickey and the SREC do not want the death of the Republican Party. But their imprudent actions seem to indicate that they do. Supporting HB 896 is suicide. Not only does it criminalize abortion for women, there is no way it can withstand a federal court challenge. When Texas loses in federal court, the State will be required to thousands or millions to the plaintiffs — the ACLU or the Center for Reproductive Rights. Losing in court and funding the abortion industry; not strategic.
We need a Trigger Ban on abortion, SB 2350 by Sen. Paxton and HB 2350 by Rep. Capriglione. https://www.texasallianceforlife.org/alerts/urgent-legislative-alert-4-04-2019/
This is truly a stupid proposal. It is in clear violation of Roe V. Wade and will not stand court scrutiny. It also flies in the face of the existing zeitgeist which overwhelmingly supports (within reasonable limits) the rights of an adult woman to determine what happens to her body. This is one of those issues that will not only put the liberal fringes against the Republican party (not that they need a reason to do that) but will also convince a lot of middle-of-the-road people that might otherwise be considered socially conservative or socially moderate that the Republicans are truly becoming a lunatic fringe themselves. I can hear the screams of “barefoot and pregnant” all the way to the left coast.
Bob: You are right that this bill if it ever became law would quickly fall under Roe v. Wade. But, there’s something nobody seems to have thought about. Whatever one thinks of abortion as a constitutional right, if this ever gets to the Supreme Court, the justices would be so appalled that you might get the conservative justices upholding Roe against this law. That might lock them in for later Roe challenges.
Politically and legally, this bill is beyond nuts.
Does life begin at conception? As a zygote? At twenty seven weeks when ninety percent of the babies survive? Full term? Hard right wing republicans struggle with this question, democrats and moderate conservatives, not so much. Idiotic bills like this one will greatly benefit the democrats. Keep em coming. Oh and remember; you can’t put a diaper on a zygote.
Life begins at conception. Period. “If it’s not a baby, you’re not pregnant.”
I know one thing. When I faced a decision I made it. No regrets.
Really? When were you pregnant?
Takes two to tango biggun’