Texas Medical Board will discuss abortion exceptions at open meeting this week
Proposed rule, link for public included below
The Texas Medical Board will consider new language that would clarify how its medical exceptions to the state’s abortion law would work.
They will discuss it at their next upcoming meeting, which is on March 22 at 8 a.m. The session will be open to the public, and people can tune in on Microsoft Teams using the link listed in the directions attached at the end of this newsletter.
All of this was prompted by a petition that lawyers Steve and Amy Bresnen filed with the board seeking to get more guidance for doctors who think abortions are indicated by the situation a woman finds herself in.
“We’re trying to improve the situation,” Steve Bresnen said. “So physicians will know when they can perform abortions necessary to save the life of the mother or to avoid damage to major bodily function without being threatened to go to the penitentiary for 99 years.”
Amy said the Kate Cox case precipitated her filing the petition in January. She read the Texas Supreme Court opinion, which she said had many hints on how to read a statute more flexibly.
“As lawyers, we know that litigation never ends,” Amy said. “Furthermore, this is litigation over a hot-button issue like abortion. So it's certainly not going to end. So we didn't want to wait. We didn't think it was in anyone's interest to wait, whether it was the pro-choice side or the anti-abortion side. We felt the time to act was now.”
In the Cox decision, the state supreme court said that the statute doesn’t require a woman’s death to be imminent. It also said there didn’t need to be a universal medical judgment on a woman in a situation where she needs an abortion. Steve and Amy incorporated that into their petition.
Steve expects the Board to publish the proposed rule in the Texas Register, where the public has 30 days to comment on it. The board would then have to consider adding any amendments the public suggested.
The proposed draft rule includes 18 medical conditions, including ectopic pregnancy and sepsis. The complete list is included in the document I included. Doctors who’ve spoken to the Bresnens had a longer list, but the proposed rule was written to permit more exceptions instead of making it finite.
“Inevitably, some cases are going to come up that weren't captured in the list,” Steve said. “That’s why we drafted our proposed rule to make it clear that it's not an exhaustive list.”
One of the things that it won’t address is the fear among doctors for criminal prosecution.
“It's a step forward,” Amy said. “It doesn't swallow that whole apple, for lack of a better word.”