A Bipartisan Effort to Carve out Exemptions to Texas’s Abortion Ban
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2024
⏱️ 20 minutes
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Summary
Texas has multiple abortion laws, with both criminal and civil penalties for providers. They contain language that may allow for exceptions to save the life or “major bodily function” of a pregnant patient, but many doctors have been reluctant to even try interpreting these laws; at least one pregnant woman has been denied cancer treatment. The reporter Stephania Taladrid tells David Remnick about how two lawmakers worked together in a rare bipartisan effort to clarify the limited medical circumstances in which abortion is allowed. “If lawmakers created specific exemptions,” Taladrid explains, “then doctors who got sued could show that the treatment that they had offered their patients was compliant with the language of the law.” Taladrid spoke with the state representatives Ann Johnson, a Democrat, and Bryan Hughes, a conservative Republican, about their unlikely collaboration. Johnson told her that she put together a list of thirteen conditions that might qualify for a special exemption, but only two of them—premature ruptures and ectopic pregnancy—were cited in the final bill. Still, the unusual bipartisan action is cause for hope among reproductive-rights advocates that some of the extreme climate around abortion bans may be lessening.
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| 0:49.4 | This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick. |
| 0:55.0 | Even before Roe v. Wade was overturned, Texas had one of the most restrictive abortion |
| 1:03.4 | laws in the country. |
| 1:04.9 | And after Roe fell, Texas went further with multiple laws that made nearly all abortions illegal. |
| 1:11.6 | We'll take a look at this crowd. |
| 1:13.4 | Thousands are here at City Hall for the Houston Women's March. |
| 1:17.9 | Here for many issues, but the biggest being the fight for abortion rights. |
| 1:22.4 | The mother's health is also deteriorating, and doctors have told them in this situation, |
| 1:27.4 | most would choose to terminate the pregnancy. |
| 1:29.5 | However, under Texas law, that is no longer an option. |
| 1:32.2 | Emotional testimony from women in a Texas courtroom today |
| 1:35.0 | saying the state's abortion ban put their lives in danger. |
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