Though Governor Greg Abbott has signed the “Life of the Mother Act” into law in Texas — legislation that was drafted to clarify the state’s pro-life law — there is still concern that it creates dangerous loopholes in existing law.
Key Takeaways:
- Passed earlier this spring, Governor Abbott signed the bill into law after a two-month delay.
- The legislation was introduced as a response to unrelenting pro-abortion media propaganda, accusing Texas’ pro-life laws of putting women’s lives at risk.
- The new law allows abortions to be committed past 20 weeks for “medical emergencies” with no limit mentioned, even if the child can survive outside of the womb.
The Details:
In a press release, Abbott announced he had signed Senate Bill 31 along with over 600 other bills.
“Texas is where the American dream lives,” he said. “Today, I signed critical legislation passed in the 89th Regular Legislative Session that protects the safety of Texans and safeguards the individual freedoms that our great state was founded on. Working with the Texas Legislature, we will keep Texas the best place to live, work, and raise a family.”
Previously, the Texas Health and Safety Code § 34.001 defined a “life-threatening condition” as “a condition from which the likelihood of death is probable unless the course of the condition is interrupted.” Under the “Life of the Mother Act,” that is changed, with abortion being permitted for any condition that is considered to be “capable of causing death or potentially fatal” and “is not necessarily one actively injuring the patient.”
As previously reported by Live Action News, the problem with this vague wording is that countless abortionists say pregnancy itself is life-threatening, or a medical problem, even without any health indications. Court documents have also exposed that Planned Parenthood abortionists likewise say that all abortions are “medically necessary.”
This bill’s definitions — along with the allowance of abortion past 20 weeks with no mention of attempting to save the child with potential to survive outside the womb — could kill many more babies in Texas.
Attorney Lisa Kaufman told Valley Central it was necessary for doctors to know when they are able to take action in pregnancy-related emergencies. “The doctor doesn’t have to wait for her to get sepsis,” she said. “They know that if you have PPROM, if you don’t intervene, sepsis will happen, and it allows the doctor to intervene right away, before the woman ever gets sick and has the possibility of dying.”
But is this really the case?
Reality Check:
As Live Action News previously stated with regard to potentially life-threatening, emergency situation:
[I]nduced abortion is not the standard of care for pregnancy emergencies.
Not PPROM, not preeclampsia, not placenta accreta, not placenta percreta, not placenta increta, not placenta previa, and so on (see more information at links provided). While some of these conditions may warrant early delivery of the baby, this is not remotely the same as intentionally killing the preborn child. Nowhere is induced abortion listed as a treatment for any of these conditions….
While induced abortion — the direct and intentional killing of a preborn human being — is not medically necessary to end a pregnancy and save the mother’s life, state pro-life laws provide exceptions for abortion in emergency situations. When a pregnancy must end (such as in the case of ectopic pregnancy), doctors can provide women with appropriate treatment, whether that be surgery to remove the fallopian tube and embryo during an ectopic pregnancy (which if untreated will be fatal to the mother), or preterm delivery of the child in other circumstances.
With these procedures, the unintended death of the child may result — but this is fundamentally different from intentionally killing the child when it is unnecessary to do so.
The Backstory:
The justification for this law has been biased, shoddy reporting from pro-abortion media outlets, which have frequently reported pregnancy-related horror stories, blaming them on pro-life laws.
ProPublica’s investigation into the effect of pro-life laws received a Pulitzer Prize, despite being rife with bias and shoddy reporting. In Texas, for example, pro-life laws were blamed for an increase in maternal sepsis cases, even though maternal sepsis is a leading cause of death for pregnant women, regardless of whether they live in pro-life states or states which permit abortion, and accounts for 261,000 deaths each year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sepsis caused almost 13% of U.S. pregnancy-related deaths from 2011-2013, and rates have been rising overall.
The follow-up investigation, which found that inconsistent hospital policies — not pro-life laws — were leading to women’s deaths, was promoted far less.
Yet the propaganda from ProPublica was successful; readers and legislators alike were convinced that laws protecting preborn children from abortion were putting women’s lives at risk. And new legislation was hardly necessary; the Texas Medical Board had already given further clarification on the law. Doctors in the state have also always been allowed to use their “reasonable medical judgment” in situations of medical emergency. As OB/GYN Dr. Ingrid Skop previously pointed out for Live Action News, physicians already understand this:
Obstetricians have always understood what wording like “reasonable medical judgment” and abortion for “life of the mother” mean… because “even the federal Hyde Amendment, for example, prohibits payment of elective abortion, and yet it has always allowed payment and doctors to perform an abortion if it is needed to save the life of the mother. So doctors know what it means.
She added that “there is no imminency requirement in [Texas] law,” meaning that “a doctor does not need to wait until a woman is dying until he can intervene.”
The Bottom Line:
While the good intentions of pro-life legislators may have been the impetus for the “Life of the Mother Act,” they might have instead passed a Trojan horse law that could be used to intentionally kill many preborn children in a pro-life state.
