This is breaking news. Testimony was taken well into the
evening Tuesday, so the vote came fairly late.
The unofficial total is 94 yeas, 51 nays, 1 present not voting. Good for
Texas!
This is the bill that got Wendy Davis and her pink tennis
shoes notoriety at the close of the first special session, when she
filibustered to prevent the vote. (Bill text here.)
The bill will still face a Senate vote before becoming law;
the Senate has a companion bill, SB1, with hearings scheduled for July 11. I
think it is very likely to pass. This bill is the main reason for holding this
second special session.
The bill’s main purpose is to ban late-term abortions beyond
20 weeks gestation—the point at which evidence shows the fetus feels pain.
Exceptions are made in critical health situations. The 20-month point is
already well beyond limitations for abortions in most European countries. It is
difficult to envision a situation in which a woman, knowing she is pregnant and
not wanting to be, cannot act before five months gestation. So the bill is seen
as not causing an undue burden.
Another purpose of the bill is an effort to avoid the lack
of regulation that allowed for the filth and horror seen in the Gosnell case.
Pro-abortionists claimed that case should not represent their purposes, because
lack of regulation was the problem. So this bill requires that abortion clinics
abide by the same standards as other ambulatory surgery centers, such as those
that do Lasik eye surgery or colonoscopies. Opponents of the bill claimed this
was an unfair burden, because it would require 37 of 42 abortion clinics in
Texas to upgrade or close. Let me repeat that another way: currently 88% of
Texas abortion clinics cannot meet the minimum standards of safety and health
required of all other types of clinics—yet the opposition wants to keep the
standard lower “for the sake of women’s health.” Right.
People who clamor for the “right” to behave in uncivilized
ways will show their savagery in the process.
That was true at the end of the first legislative session,
when their “free speech” was actually a raucous mob preventing civil society
from functioning. Rallies have shown them hollering “hail Satan,” and hurling profanities at churches
in particular and anyone who disagrees with them. They offer up death threats to the
Lieutenant Governor and threats against family members of pro-life legislators.
Their visual aid during Tuesday hearings was to carry coat hangers and claim the law would force women into using such devices on
themselves—but of course without any logical connection between the actual law
and the “need” to use a coat hanger on oneself. Choosing to stab an unborn
infant with a coat hanger isn’t what horrifies them; it is that infanticide isn’t made more convenient for the woman choosing to kill the infant.
That is savagery.
Their best argument about the “unborn pain” part of the law
is, “not all science agrees.” They are not concerned with the infant’s pain.
Nor can they give a decent reason for a woman—without medical need but only
personal life choice of whether to be pregnant after engaging in behavior that
led to pregnancy—to require the option of offing the child at will a full five
months into the child's growth. She suddenly gets concerned about stretch marks? I’m
not sure.
For reasons they don’t comprehend, uncivilized demands don’t
persuade well in Texas.
