The Texas Observer

The two most controversial abortion bills died tonight in the House. Speaker Tom Craddick sustained a day-old point of order on SB 785, killing the bill and possibly angering his pro-life base of support, although maybe he has bigger worries at the moment. The legislation would have required excessive and invasive abortion reporting and outed the judges that rule in sensitive judicial bypass cases.

Rep. Frank Corte pulled down SB 920 - Sen. Dan Patrick’s bill that would have required abortion providers to perform ultrasounds and possibly force a woman to review them - after it became clear the bill’s opponents would drag out today’s calendar until midnight to keep it from coming up. With today being the deadline for the House to pass Senate bills on second reading, SB 920 could have been the death of dozens of bills behind it on the calendar.

Corte was clearly not happy. After he pulled the bill down, he stormed out of the House chamber.

Speaker Tom Craddick adjourned the House today without laying out the postponed anti-abortion bills, the pet projects of the pro-life movement this session.

Before adjournment, Rep. David Swinford, chairman of the House State Affairs committee, defended his committee from the front microphone. He denied yesterday’s allegations by Rep. Jim Dunnam that the sudden appearance of the abortion bills on the calendar was a political move to reward the pro-life community’s support of Craddick in the speaker’s race.

Swinford wrote in a press release: “I want to reiterate that the sequence of events that took place regarding SB 785 were entirely routine and that the timing of such legislation to be placed on the calendar was not related in any way to outside influences.”

Like Craddick, he said he did not see the Texas Alliance for Life email that appears to have been sent to the entire House.

Tuesday is the deadline for the House to pass Senate bills, so if the bills’ opponents have valid points of order, the legislation could be killed on Monday. Craddick seems caught between the demands of his pro-life base of support, members who don’t want to have to vote on this contraversial legislation, and rumblings of a speaker overthrow.

Behind the politics and deal-making lies the real issue: these two bills are part of the pro-life movement’s attempt to chip away at a woman’s access to abortion. The legislation allows government to intrude on a personal, medical decision that a woman makes with her doctor.

Perhaps wary of a restive House, Speaker Tom Craddick adjourned today after hashing out just one item on the Major State Calendar and before getting to a controversial pro-life bill. The adjournment came soon after Rep. Jim Dunnam hinted from the back microphone that the sudden appearance of SB 785 on today’s calendar was a form of political payola, in exchange for the pro-life movement’s badgering of members to support Craddick in a presumptive speaker’s race.

SB 785 – an abortion and judicial bypass reporting bill that restricts a woman’s access to abortion and could reveal how judges rule on cases to allow minors to obtain abortions – has been the number one objective of pro-lifers this session. After being voted out of House State Affairs May 7, the bill sat for a week without being sent to the Calendars Committee for consideration. It’s future seemed dim.
On Monday, as rumors swirled of a move to vacate the speaker’s chair and with Rep. Jim Keffer announcing that he’ll challenge the speaker, Texas Alliance for Life sent an email to members threatening that “We will score any vote to unseat the Speaker as an anti-life vote.”

On Tuesday, SB 785 was sent to Calendars and was placed on today’s Major State Calendar.

“[Craddick is] manipulating the calendar to try to save his skin, or save his gavel,” Dunnam charges. “He is rewarding [Texas Alliance for Life] for pressuring members.”

Hearing SB 785 on the floor will guarantee a harsh political debate that many a member would just as soon avoid. The bill’s opponents have amendments and points of order ready for tomorrow’s dispute. What will happen if a member has a valid point of order on the bill is anyone’s guess. If Craddick sustains the point and the bill dies, his pro-life allies will be displeased. If Craddick overrules the point, House Democrats and Republican moderates could rise up and reverse his ruling or even move to unseat him by calling to vacate the chair.

Today, in response to Dunnam’s floor inquiries, Craddick said he had never seen the Texas Alliance for Life email.

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?”

With a round of applause and few dissenting votes, the House passed HB 13 last night – without the tough language on illegal immigration in earlier versions. Perhaps some Republican support was initially won due to the bill’s efforts to allow local peace officers to enforce federal immigration laws (which is a bad idea for public safety). In a session where immigration legislation was predestined for failure, it may have been the only way for anti-immigrant forces to feel productive. Yet at the end of the day, the bill’s sponsors knew that most of the anti-immigrant hotheads would vote for the bill anyway.

Tyler Republican Rep. Leo Berman felt gypped, or so he said in a 12-minute personal privilege speech to the House following the bill’s passage, where he spewed out the same phony arguments against immigration as he did in the beginning of the session.

“Members, this is probably the only time you’re going to hear anyone talk about illegal aliens on the floor of this House of Representatives, because we’ve been shut out of this bill at every single turn,” Berman said. “Nearly a majority of the members on this floor consider House Bill 13 to be half a bill… because it dealt with border security, but at the same time it was silent about the 1.5 million illegal aliens in Texas that are costing your taxpayers $3.5 billion every single year.”

Berman lamented the “two dozen bills filed to deal with this problem” that had died in the State Affairs Committee, due to a decision by Chairman David Swinford (R-Dumas) to send all immigration bills to the attorney general to check their constitutionality.

He went on to condemn illegal immigration as the source of all depravity that contaminates our otherwise illustrious state. “Illegal aliens” spread diseases, jam our prisons, hurl schools and hospitals into debt, and bleed dry the taxes bestowed by our hard-working, middle-class constituents – only to cash in freely on the best benefit of all: U.S. citizenship for their children.

Berman’s rants represent a larger fear among some Texans in the face of rapid demographic changes, as the state becomes increasingly more urban and ethnic. Politicians who claim that illegal immigration is the biggest problem in Texas don’t help. (Health insurance? Nah. Education? Not even close.)

Possibly the most honest thing that Berman said was this: “Everyone or many members on this floor needs a vote on illegal aliens to take home and say we did a little bit of something about it.”

Pity the demagogue who stirs up the fear but then can’t do anything about it.

It doesn’t seem to matter to the Berman’s of the world that anti-immigration legislation doesn’t work. It drives the undocumented population deeper into the shadows, but it does not deter undocumented workers from crossing the border when there are jobs to be filled and no opportunities at home. Berman – like other ideologues stuck on the phrase “they’re not legal, they’re not legal” – wants to be able to tell their constituents that they voted against immigration, even though a vote against immigration is, essentially, meaningless.

Victoria Republican Rep. Geanie Morrison’s abortion and judicial bypass reporting bill, which accidentally died in committee two weeks ago, got its second chance last week. Rep. Bill Zedler (R-Arlington) folded Morrison’s bill into his House Bill 1131, a bill that originally required physicians to report seeing patients with complications due to abortions. The bill passed out of committee last week.

“Philosophically, Geanie and I on this issue are very agreeable,” Zedler said today.

HB 1131 now requires abortion patients to provide a laundry list of intrusive and unnecessary information, like the age of the father, how the procedure was paid for, and the source of referral for the abortion. The patient has the option of stating the reason for the abortion. Opponents say the bill is yet another effort to hinder a woman’s access to abortion. Physicians, insurance companies and places that refer women to abortion providers could all be targeted.

The bill also requires that rulings on judicial bypass cases be reported by county. In judicial bypass cases, a minor can bypass the parental consent law if a judge agrees that telling a parent of a decision to have an abortion may lead to abuse or abandonment. Opponents of the bill worry that disclosing rulings on such cases by county could make judges targets in election campaigns, or worse. Of Texas’ 254 counties, 45 percent have only one judge, and 70 percent have either one or two.

“I think this idea that somehow everybody’s going to know who it was if it’s by county- I think that argument is fallacious,” Zedler said, and then, letting his mask slip, he continued: “I think it’s very important that people know how judges are ruling on this issue.”

The Senate version of the bill, which passed out of the Senate last week, requires judicial bypass reporting by state rather than county, avoiding the whole outing of judges issues. That bill now awaits consideration in the House State Affairs committee.

Rep. Charlie Howard’s so-called freedom of religious expression in public schools bill passed this afternoon, facing a somewhat tamer reception in the House this time around. Still opponents did put up a fight, offering up a number of (failed) amendments that would have cleaned up the bill’s blatant attempt at allowing a religious majority to cram their theology down the throats of a captive school audience.

Howard opposed all the amendments, painting a picture of a bill so carefully constructed by constitutional experts, that any change, even those “nice-sounding” ones, he said, would open the legislation up to lawsuits.

The bill, according to Howard, “does not give any students any rights or freedom that they don’t have today. It is a neutral bill. It does not add anything to the law.” The policy would only help school districts avoid expensive lawsuits for suppressing student religious expression, he said.

The bill requires schools to set up “limited public forums” – such as sports events, assemblies, and opening announcements – during which student leaders may express a religious or secular viewpoint. Opponents expressed concern that students of a minority religion in the school would be compelled to participate in religious activities of the majority.

Supporters of the bill cast themselves as champions of little girls whose teachers won’t let them talk about Jesus on Easter, when other kids are talking about chocolate eggs and bunnies. Opponents of the bill agree that students’ First Amendment rights allow them to express religious beliefs in the classroom or for homework assignments, but don’t think that’s a good idea at an obligatory, official school event.

“I believe the intent of the author is to facilitate imposing certain religious values on students regardless of their own faith systems,” said Rep. Lon Burnam (D-Fort Worth).

Some speculate that supporters attempted to limit debate on the bill last week because they feared defeat, especially after one amendment prohibiting speech that discriminates on the basis of sexual preference had already tainted the legislation.

Perhaps postponing debate until today was an effective strategy, as the bill passed easily 110-33. The governor issued a statement in support of the bill; what the Senate does with this controversial piece of legislation remains to be seen.