March 14, 2013 - 1:38pm
Bill filing time is up at the Legislature, and it’s exposed an arsenal of bills aimed at women’s health. The main weapon: TRAPs, or Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers. It’s easy to spot these bills. They’re medically
unnecessary, and they single out abortion providers for intense, politically motivated regulations.
One TRAP bill would burden clinics with so many unneeded regulations that all but three or four clinics would likely close. The bill forces abortion clinics to meet higher, specialized regulatory standards designed for facilities that perform outpatient surgery. These regulations have little to do with abortion. Instead, they’re meant control surgery variables such as anesthesiologists, laboratories, and radiology procedures. Again, there’s no medical or legal reason to apply these standards to abortion clinics. But if this bill passes, it endangers thousands of Texas women by closing the very facilities that could offer them safe, regulated health services. SB 1198
Sen. Dan Patrick’s proposed restriction on medication-based abortion is one of the worst. Doctors know non-surgical abortions, which use medication in the first weeks of pregnancy, are safe and affordable. Yet Patrick wants to force unneeded repeat appointments, only with one physician, on any Texas woman prescribed a medication-based abortion. There’s no medical reason for this government intervention. Abortions are intensely regulated and among the safest medical procedures performed in the United States. But then, this bill isn’t about protecting women’s health. It’s about promoting Dan Patrick. SB 97
Then there are the politicians who want to meddle directly in families’ most private decisions. A proposed ban would outlaw abortion in almost every case after 20 weeks -- in other words, before many women even know they are pregnant. That means a family with a tragic complication might not know about it in time to consult their doctor, or worse, be goaded into a hasty decision. The 20 week ban recklessly takes the most private health decisions from families and their doctors, handing it directly to Texas politicians. That’s not where our reproductive health decisions belong. SB 25