Last session ended in a stalemate on abortion. In Texas, where residents face the most extreme abortion restrictions in the U.S., Democrats tried both ways. They filed bills with modest reforms, to allow abortions in cases of incest, for example. They filed pie-in-the-sky bills that would have reversed the state’s abortion ban altogether. None of those bills made it to a vote on the House floor.
Likewise, further restrictions on reproductive health care stalled out – the rightmost members of the Texas GOP did not restrict travel out of state to prevent abortions in blue states, for example. And they never filed “personhood” bills, which would designate zygotes and fetuses as citizens. (Such legislation would render the end of any pregnancy or even the accidental destruction of embryos during an in vitro fertilization process as potential manslaughter or murder.)
So we saw no meaningful change in abortion-related legislation. We did however see changes in our society. Roughly 7,000 women traveled out of state for an abortion in 2023, according to data from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Since the state’s abortion ban took effect in 2022, more than 25,000 Texas women have been impregnated by their rapist, University of Texas researchers estimated. And some women who needed abortions died – among them a teenager and a 35-year-old woman, as ProPublica reported.
This session, we can’t afford another stalemate, says state Rep. Donna Howard, the Austin Democrat who heads the Texas Women’s Health Caucus.
So far, Democrats in the 89th Legislature have filed some bills familiar from the 88th. House Bill 1220 from Dallas Democrat Mihaela Plesa sets exceptions to the state’s abortion ban for pregnancies started via in vitro and for women 35 years or older with a high-risk pregnancy. HB 1578, from Houston Democrat Penny Morales Shaw, makes an exception just for assault. Howard has filed a bill with a broader set of exceptions (its twin bill in the Senate is from Houston Dem Carol Alvarado). This legislation would allow abortions to save a mother, to save a mother’s physical or mental health, or when a fetus is not viable.
Howard says she hopes these exceptions can fit into a larger act to support Texas mothers’ and babies’ health, something “palatable” for Democrats and Republicans. This package of legislation couldn’t contain anything seriously controversial, she says, but it could include Medicaid reimbursement for doulas, and an expansion of the state’s mobile health clinics to bring medical care to rural Texas moms far from hospitals.
Meanwhile, conservatives have so far filed a few abortion-related bills worth following. HB 1651 would prohibit abortion pill sales online. HB 196 would require that schools teach that “human life begins at conception and has inherent dignity and immeasurable worth from the moment of conception.” SB 619 would allow health care providers to decline to participate in a wide range of health care services, including abortion, “for reasons of conscience.”
This article appears in January 10 • 2025.