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Texas passes restrictive abortion law

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texas capitolPro choice supporters fear that new legislation in Texas will limit access to abortions.

Called ‘The Republicans back door abortion ban’ by critics, House Bill 2 (HB2) has caused a thunderstorm of controversy in a United States-wide debate concerning abortion services.

HB2 was largely brought to the attention of diverse media, including in WVoN, after an impressive display by Texas Senator Wendy Davis who blocked the bill’s passage on June 25 2013 by speaking for over 10 hours in the Texas Senate, a technique called a filibuster.

Unfortunately, dashing the hopes of Davis and pro-choice campaigners across Texas, the Bill was nevertheless passed on 12 July in the Texas Senate by a majority of 19 to 11, after being passed by the House earlier in the week .

Republican Rick Perry, the current governor of Texas, signed HB2 in to law shortly afterwards, on 18 July.

NARAL Pro Choice Texas criticised Perry’s decision to sign the Bill as ‘signalling his disregard for the reproductive lives of Texas women’.

In a press release on 18 July NARAL’s executive director Heather Busby explained that nothing in this law would improve women’s health and safety, but if it were allowed to go into effect, it would create a public health crisis.

Busby was referring to stipulations in the legislation, under section 2, that say: ‘A physician performing or inducing an abortion: […] must, on the date the abortion is performed or induced, have active admitting privileges at a hospital that […] is located not further than 30 miles from the location at which the abortion is performed’.  In addition the hospital must be able to provide ‘obstetrical or gynaecological health services’.

It is evident that this would force women in rural communities to travel long distances to access abortions.

Delays in access to abortion services are likely to mean that some women who could have received chemical induced abortions will have to undergo abortive operations instead, increasing potential trauma and medical risk.

The legislation also says that women may not access legal abortions after 20 weeks, saying ‘the state has a compelling state interest in protecting the lives of unborn children from the stage at which substantial medical evidence indicates that these children are capable of feeling pain’.

And it goes on to declare that ‘the woman has adequate time to decide whether to have an abortion in the first 20 weeks after fertilization’.

However Abortion Rights UK points out  that only a small proportion of women tend to have abortions after 20 weeks, and those that do are ‘often the most vulnerable women in difficult situations’.

Abortion Rights UK explains that ‘they include young women concealing or in denial about their pregnancies, women unaware they were pregnant because they had been using contraception, and women whose personal circumstances change dramatically after conceiving due to bereavement, family illness or domestic violence’.

And both Abortion Rights and Dr  Kate Guthrie, spokesperson for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists UK, say that: ‘all the UK’s major professional medical bodies continue to back the current 24-week limit’ which is still in operation in the United Kingdom.

Most damagingly, various sources assert that the impact of the law will be the closure of all but five of the state’s 42 abortion clinics.

This claim is backed up by report on American news network CBS which said: ‘a woman along the Mexico border or in West Texas [will] have to drive hundreds of miles to obtain an abortion’.

Texas state senator, Democrat Judith Zaffirini, a self-proclaimed pro lifer, voted against HB2.

Damningly she said:  ‘This is NOT a pro-life bill, [it] reduces women’s access to health care; does nothing to reduce unintended pregnancies; does nothing to reduce the number of abortions; intrudes upon the doctor-patient relationship; and is opposed strongly by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Texas Hospital Association, whose priorities certainly include the health care of women’.

HB2 is anticipated to take effect in as little as 91 days after being signed off by the House, Senate and Texas Governor, in accordance with Article 39 of Texas’s constitution.

The Bill is being challenged, with an expectation that HB2 will be debated at the federal level.

But NARAL Pro Choice Texas said that huge, committed campaigns have emerged in backlash against the passing of HB2.

Heather Busby said:  ‘Gov. Perry and anti-choice lawmakers have awakened a strong pro-choice movement in Texas that will only continue to grow, “what we saw at the state capitol over the last month is a clear indication that Texans have had enough”’.

A Stand with Texas Women tumblr encourages individuals in sympathy with those against the passing of HB2 to post pictures of themselves declaring their solidarity with Texan Women.

It is with conviction that I express that I stand with you Texas Women, because, as is often said but rarely listened to: access to legal abortion is a right and not a privilege.

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