GOP Leaders in Some States Want to Add Abortion Ban Exceptions | PEW

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By: Stephen Elliott

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the state Senate, has signaled he might be willing to take up the exceptions question.

“I am not saying no, but we’d have to see a real groundswell of Republicans in the House and Senate to say yes,” Patrick told Spectrum News’ Capital Tonight in a December interview.

Amy O’Donnell, communications director for Texas Alliance for Life, said her organization is “definitely against a rape-incest exception in our abortion laws,” though the group supports exceptions for medical emergencies. O’Donnell added, however, that her organization has not withdrawn support from anti-abortion rights lawmakers who support rape and incest exceptions.

In Texas, Where Abortion Rights Began, GOP Builds New Barriers | PEW

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By: David Montgomery

Joe Pojman, a former aerospace engineer who is now executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, said the law “would completely protect unborn children from abortion beginning at conception.

“That would be the fulfillment of our dreams and goals for the last 50 years.”

But Cain and Capriglione, along with anti-abortion leaders like Pojman, emphatically dismiss the possibility of prosecuting women who get abortions, saying the criminal offenses should apply only to doctors and others who perform the procedure.

Texas’ pre-Roe abortion statute, which originated in 1854, “never even contemplated making … any penalties for the woman who has the abortion,” Capriglione said, “and my bill doesn’t either.”