The Senate Health and Human Services Committee will gather at 10 am on Monday – a day before the full body is slated to reconvene – to consider Senate Bill 1, the upper chamber’s version of the sweeping and divisive abortion regulations bill.
Registration for speakers will begin at 9 am, according to the committee notice, and each speaker will be given two minutes talk time. There is no mention of how long Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, chair of the committee, will allow the meeting to run.
The House State Affairs Committee approved its version of the measure, HB 2, just after midnight on a party-line vote, 8-3 with two lawmakers absent.
Some 3,000 people registered a position on the bill. Fewer than 100 were actually called to testify during the eight-and-a-half-hour hearing. In the end, 1,015 people who wanted to testify were not called to do so before the committee closed the meeting and voted on the bill.
Passage of the House measure means the bill will be ready for lawmakers to consider when they return on July 9. Indeed, if the Senate committee votes out its version of the bill, by Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, which covers the same regulations and prohibitions as does the one filed by Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, R-Parker, the Senate too could be lined up to hear the bill when it returns – also on Tuesday morning, at 11 am, an hour after the House gets to business.
This article appears in June 28 • 2013.