Abortion Bill Up in House Tomorrow
May 16th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Two heavy-handed anti-abortion bills were set for the House’s Major State Calendar tomorrow in what was perhaps a political move by Speaker Tom Craddick to appease the GOP base.
Early this afternoon, House State Affairs Chairman David Swinford (R-Dumas) sent Houston Republican Sen. Dan Patrick’s SB 920 back to committee due to an error in the bill analysis. Swinford says he plans to vote the bill back out of committee today, but it won’t make the House floor by tomorrow.
That leaves SB 785 by Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano), a bill that requires excessive reporting for abortions, abortion complications and judicial bypass case rulings. On the Senate floor, the bill was amended to require judicial bypass reporting by state rather than by county, avoiding the issue of outing judges who rule in those sensitive cases. The House State Affairs committee restored the bill to its original language, calling for reporting by county. In a state where 70 percent of the counties have only one or two judges, such reporting could easily reveal the identity of judges who grant judicial bypass to minors seeking abortions, and pro-lifers could target them in elections, or worse.
SB 920 would require abortion providers to perform ultrasounds, a practice that is already standard medical procedure in most cases. The Senate Health and Human Services committee amended the bill with the intention of giving a woman the option of viewing the sonogram rather than forcing her. The bill’s opponents say the language is ambivalent about whether or not a woman would have to look at the sonogram. Patrick said on the Senate floor that he hoped a woman would reconsider her decision to have an abortion after looking at the ultrasound.
Both bills seek to hinder a woman’s right to make this important decision without being coerced. Tomorrow’s debate could be interesting, as the bills’ opponents have some amendments in store. Rep. Ellen Cohen (D-Houston) says she plans to offer an amendment that would withdraw any reference in materials provided to women seeking abortions to the relationship between breast cancer and abortion. Studies clearly show that no such relationship exists, she says.
Speculating on the success of her amendment, Cohen says, “It depends if people are voting the issue based on medical information, or as a visceral response to how they feel about choice or anti-choice issues.”
Rep. Mike Villarreal (D-San Antonio) says he’s planning amendments that will allow the House to debate the following: “Do we believe that women are capable of making healthcare decisions for themselves, and should the government support campaigns of misinformation?”
May 17th, 2007 at 8:51 am
I’m glad I don’t live in Texas. I have a brain and am perfectly capable of making difficult decisions on my own without the state forcing me to “reconsider.”