Texas Approves New Limits on Abortion
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas’ Republican-controlled Legislature has advanced tough new limits on abortion, hitting back at a United States Supreme Court decision last summer that struck down most of the sweeping restrictions on the procedure that the state approved four years ago.
The Texas House voted 96 to 47 late Friday on legislation that bans a commonly used second-trimester abortion procedure, known as dilation and evacuation, similar to laws that courts have blocked in Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. It further stipulated that doctors performing the procedure in Texas would face felony charges.
Those contentious provisions were tacked onto a broader bill requiring the burial or cremation of fetal remains from abortions, even though a federal judge has blocked an existing state rule that mandates the same thing.
The measure also bans the sale or donation of fetal tissue, a provision that Republican-majority legislatures around the country have sought since the release of heavily edited, secretly recorded videos shot inside Planned Parenthood clinics by an anti-abortion group in 2015.
The proposal previously cleared the State Senate but will have to return there because the House expanded its scope. The State Senate is even more conservative, though, and passage is expected to be easy.
“Drawn and quartering,” said Representative Stephanie Klick, Republican of Fort Worth, who attached the amendment to the bill. “That’s essentially what we are doing to these unborn children.”
Representative Donna Howard, Democrat of Austin, countered that banning the procedure would endanger the lives of pregnant women.
“This is political interference in medicine at its worst,” said Ms. Howard, who broke down in tears.
Representative Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, the leader of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, predicted future legal challenges to the new legislation.
On Friday, he asked, “Why don’t we just stop passing unconstitutional laws for a change?”
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