Texas bill calls for life imprisonment for people who help women get abortions
Known as House Bill 5510, it would also impose fines on judges and lawyers who challenge or nullify the bans.
A new bill in the Texas legislature would severely restrict abortion access and impose draconian punishment on people who violate the law.
Known as House Bill 5510 in that chamber and Senate Bill 2880 in the other, the bill calls for punishments of up to life in prison for assisting or funding abortions, including those out of state. If a person provides information on abortion, they could be sued for $100,000 for each violation. Rep. Donna Howard, who’s been involved in the debate about abortion regulations in the Texas legislature, spoke to me about the situation.
“People don't know what they can legally do and not do,” Howard said. “Fear and confusion seem to be the goal of a lot of this legislation.”
There are some other troubling caveats to the bill. The bill would impose penalties on judges who find abortion bans unconstitutional and lawyers who bring challenges to them.
“It's mind-boggling that there would actually be language that says you cannot take this to court,” Howard said. “You are prohibited from challenging the statute. But that's absolutely included in that.”
Howard said that if those medications were not readily available, we could potentially see more harmful outcomes for women with pregnancy complications. The bill targets tech companies and medication abortion websites, and is designed to have a chilling effect on abortion medication manufacturers and prescribers who send in pills.
“Manufacturers that would be concerned about potential lawsuits liability, and would therefore not produce as much, would not distribute as much, and that becomes a real slippery slope in terms of the fact that these medications are used for other purposes, in particular for pregnancy complications, for miscarriages,” Howard said.
Howard fears that all this legislation will force women to go underground to get abortions, which creates a far more dangerous situation than consulting reliable sources out in the open. Women could go to illegal abortion providers or travel out of the country.
When considering this bill, serious questions about freedom of speech exist. In America, someone who can read something in New York or Pennsylvania should be able to read it in Texas or Mississippi, too. That question arose in a Tennessee case I profiled in which a legislator and lawyer challenged a ban on First Amendment grounds. The judge ruled in their favor and said that funds and activists could provide information to young people.
Eventually, these free speech questions will make their way up to the Supreme Court, which has been strong on First Amendment guarantees, but it is also filled with the judges who took away abortion rights. How will they rule on this? We’ll find out in the next few years.
As for Texas, a lot of this is grandstanding and pandering to the base for conservative politicians.
“Our Republican colleagues want to be able to go back home after the session ends and show their base that they did something to once again address abortion in terms of obstructing access,” Howard said.