‘Life of the Mother Act’ aims to clarify Texas abortion law exceptions

Texas Senator Bryan Hughes and State Rep. Charlie Geren have introduced bills in the Texas Senate and House to clarify the language surrounding exceptions in the state’s pro-life law. Senate Bill 31 and House Bill 44, the Life of the Mother Act, will alter the existing language of the state’s health and safety code.

Currently, the Texas Health and Safety Code includes an abortion “exception for medical emergency.” However, pro-abortion advocates have complained that the exception was confusing, and some doctors claimed they were incapable of understanding how to use their best judgment to determine if a woman’s pregnancy must end due to an emergency. At least two articles published by ProPublica erroneously blamed the Texas Heartbeat Law for the deaths of two women, sparking more controversy and confusion over the law and its exceptions.

As a result, Hughes and Geren created the Life of the Mother Act to change the wording of the Texas Health and Safety Code to ensure that pregnant women facing an emergency can end their pregnancies. However, an induced abortion — the act of directly killing the preborn child — is not necessary, and in a medical emergency, a delivery (without first killing the baby) is a legal way to end a pregnancy.

“Our goal is to make the statutes crystal clear,” said Hughes. “So there is no excuse, no delay in treating moms that need help and making sure that docs know what the law is.”

READ: Texas AG Ken Paxton announces arrest of Houston-area abortionist

The state’s law currently ensures that a doctor who commits an abortion during a “medical emergency” can use his best medical judgment to do so. However, the bill removes the word “life-threatening” from the exception, changing the wording to allow for an induced abortion solely if the woman experiences “a physical condition aggravated by, caused, by or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”

The Life of the Mother Act also adds wording to clarify that the exception “does not require a physician to delay, alter or withhold medical treatment provided to a pregnant female …” if doing so would cause a threat to her health or life.

Surprisingly, it also appears to remove the portion of the code that states an abortion cannot be carried out for a mother’s “psychological condition,” potentially leaving a large loophole in the law.

The Life of the Mother Act also expands the definition of an ectopic pregnancy to include when the baby implants in “a scarred portion of the uterus” such as a C-section scar (known as a cesarean scar pregnancy), or “an abnormal location in the uterus causing the fertilized egg or embryo to be non-viable…”

Importantly, the proposed bill also states that OB/GYNs must take a course on the law and that the course must also be made available to hospital attorneys at no cost.

According to the Texas Induced Termination of Pregnancy report, there were 64 induced abortions in Texas from January through October 2024, making it clear that doctors are committing abortions under the exceptions that currently exist — even though directly and intentionally killing a preborn child is not truly medically necessary.