Dateline Houston

There’s always womb for Rick Perry.

On Tuesday, he alighted at The Source For Women, a crisis pregnancy center in Houston whose opening ribbon he cut in September, to announce his support for prospective legislation called Bean the “Preborn Pain Act,” aka a fetal pain bill. (The name comes from the belief, popular among opponents of abortion access, that 20-week-old fetuses can feel pain. A 2005 research review by the Journal of the American Medical Association says that isn’t true.) The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks even for victims of rape or incest, although, magnanimously, would allow the procedure save a woman’s life.

But only about one half of one percent of abortions in Texas take place after 20 weeks. And according to NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, most of those few are medical emergencies, so the new rule wouldn’t apply to them.

That doesn’t mean the “fetal pain” bill won’t make abortions harder to get.

Part of the proposed bill, lightly touched on in Perry’s presentation, is a requirement that abortion clinics conform to “surgical operating” room standards. Because the bill itself is preborn, it’s hard to say what exactly that will mean, but Heather Busby, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice TX, has a guess.

“Back in 2004,” Busby says, “the Legislature passed a bill that required any abortion after 16 weeks to be performed in an ambulatory surgical center (ASC). It sounds like what they’re referring to is making all clinics ASCs.”

An ASC has structural requirements like hallways wide enough for stretchers. “There was no medical reason for those requirements,” Busby said. “It was just a way to make clinics have to rebuild or remodel or move.“

In 2004, no Texas clinics met those standards. Now the only ASCs are in Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas, and their costs of service are up to three times what they were before remodeling. “The effect is felt directly by the women,” Busby says.

If the “Preborn Pain Act” passes and all abortion clinics must be ASCs, “clinics are going to close and abortion costs will be higher.”

Sounds good to Perry. His goal, he told The Source for Women, “is to make abortion, at any stage, a thing of the past.”

The Houston Chronicle reported today that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating six relatively recent cases of shootings or alleged use of force violations against unarmed citizens by the Houston Police Department.

HPD Chief Charles McClelland asked the Justice Department to investigate three of the cases, and federal prosecutors requested investigation of three others, citing widespread outrage and publicity.

Dateline Houston readers will, I’m sorry to say, be familiar with most of the cases (click the hyperlinks for our previous coverage):

1. Chad Holley, an unarmed teenage burglary suspect beaten by a nearly dozen police officers

2. Annika Lewis, the wife of a man being beaten by police in his yard after a minor traffic infraction. Annika, who is less than five feet tall, was allegedly tackled and punched after she filmed police beating her unarmed husband. She says they also took the memory card from her phone

3. Rufino Lara, who was shot unarmed after allegedly refusing to show his hands, though witnesses say he had his hands up

4. Brian Claunch, a double amputee who was shot unarmed after police thought his ballpoint pen was a weapon

5. Anthony Childress, who says he was stopped by police and beaten while riding his bike, losing six teeth and requiring 56 stitches

6. A minor in handcuffs, unnamed, who was punched by an officer, an assault caught on new cameras.

Dateline Houston has also reported on several other incidents.

In a statement, the ACLU of Texas Legal & Policy Director Rebecca Robertson said, “Good cops don’t fear accountability; they welcome it.”

Tonight, the Texas Observer’s own Melissa del Bosque will moderate a free public forum in Houston called “The True Cost of Environmental Justice.”

At issue is Texas’ longstanding pro-business approach to regulation—which is to say, not having it—and whether the jobs created by oil and chemical refineries are worth the local health and environmental costs.

While Houston has weathered the recession better than practically anyplace, a major reason is that Harris and its surrounding counties are home to more than 260 oil refineries, chemical plants, and other large industrial facilities, according to a recent count by the Houston Chronicle. Houstonians have a special interest in the balance between a strong economy and a safe, healthy home.

Ms. del Bosque and Observer multimedia editor Jen Reel know all about this. They produced our November cover story, “Kochworld,” which documented the pollution plaguing communities abutting Koch Industries-owned refineries in Corpus Christi. After spending months interviewing sick residents, Reel and del Bosque turned out a feature so good that the Koch bros put out their Benjamin-wrapped cigars long enough to fire off a rebuttal on their Myspace page corporate website kochfacts.com.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis will join del Bosque for tonight’s discussion, along with Matthew Tejada of Air Alliance Houston, Bryan Parras of T. E. J. A. S., and Dr. Jay Olaguer of the Houston Advanced Research Center. Jen Reel will provide a video introduction.

The place is Rice University, the McMurtry Auditorium in Duncan Hall. The time is 7 p.m. I’ll see you there.