Texas House advances legislation to extend restrictions on medication abortion - The Dallas Morning News

Updated at 7:42 p.m. with the bill advancing in the House.

AUSTIN — The Texas House approved legislation on Monday that would prohibit use of abortion medication in a critical period of pregnancy.

The legislation, which passed 83-42 with one member abstaining, originated in the Senate and was passed quietly out of a House committee without testimony last week.

The House version of the bill is identical to the original Senate version authored by Brownsville Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr. If the bill is approved on third reading in the house, it will be sent to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

Abortion rights attorney Blake Rocap said the Senate Bill 4 would drastically reduce the ability of someone seeking to terminate a pregnancy to get an abortion through medication. In Texas, the current deadline for medical abortion, which ends a pregnancy through the use of pills, is the 10th week of a pregnancy.

SB4 proposes to make the new deadline seven weeks into a pregnancy, before many women know they’re pregnant. As of 2018, more than 38% of abortions were medical abortions before the ninth week of pregnancy.

House Democrats introduced 17 amendments that aimed to lessen restrictions proposed in the bills, especially the restriction on medication abortion after seven weeks of pregnancy. Democratic lawmakers also raised multiple points of order in attempts to block the bill’s advancement.

But Stephanie Klick, the bill’s House sponsor, successfully defended against all challenges with the arguments that risks of complication from to medication abortion increase after seven weeks of pregnancy and that abusers could take advantage of medication abortion to force women to terminate pregnancies against their will.

The legislation is one of at least 561 bills restricting abortion access that have been either filed or passed since January.

The House’s consideration of the bill comes two days before Senate Bill 8, legislation prohibiting abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, goes into effect. That bill is facing legal challenges, including in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the American Civil Liberties Union has filed an emergency request to block enforcement, and in Travis County District Court, where numerous lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the bill have been filed.

Some critics of SB 4 say it is designed as a backup to block first term abortion if enforcement SB 8 is blocked by courts.

Lucio said in a previous hearing on the bill that its intention is to protect women from receiving medical abortion without a doctor’s office visit. Much of the testimony in hearings has centered around the potential dangers of “mail order” abortion, a practice whereby doctors can prescribe medication abortion without an in-person doctor’s office visit. That practice was allowed by the Food and Drug Administration as a result of the pandemic.

Rocap challenged that viewpoint by pointing out the bill’s language to prevent mail-order abortion is already part of current Texas statute.

“They’re saying they need this bill so that they have physician oversight, and to prevent (medication) from being mailed, which no one is doing in Texas because you have to have a sonogram 24 hours in advance,” Rocap explained.

He said the only new rule added to law by the bill would be the ban on medication abortion between seven and 10 weeks, “which is just going to force more people either to delay their care and have an in clinic procedure or seek medication abortion outside of a clinical setting.”

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