By: Ali Linan
For Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, the decision could not come soon enough.
“We are ecstatic,” he said in a statement following the news.
With this win under their belt, Pojman said the anti-abortion movement will transition into a new phase – the “pro-life movement 2.0,” as he called it.
Rebecca Parma, senior legislative associate with Texas Right to Life, said the fight is not over in their view.
“This is not the end of the story; it’s really just the end of a chapter. And we’re moving into a new chapter in the pro-life movement,” she said.
Pojman said that although they anticipate plenty of lawsuits about the court decision, his organization will begin to concentrate greater effort “in providing compassionate alternatives to women with unplanned pregnancies.”
In that, Pojman said his group will continue to push for funding of the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program, to which state legislators have appropriated $100 million. The program provides counseling, material assistance and social services for up to three years after birth. The state budget accounts for helping about 150,000 women each year, Pojman said.
While the program is funded at the whims of the state Legislature, Pojman said he believes there is enough support for the program that he does not see it ending any time in the near future. He added that his organization will continue to monitor the results of the program.
“We have a goal of creating a society in Texas which truly is compassionate for women with unplanned pregnancies so that no woman seeks to have an abortion,” Pojman said. “We want women to have all the resources they need to successfully carry their babies to term, give birth to the babies, (then) keep the babies or place the babies for adoption and would feel 100% at peace with those options.”
Current law, including the state’s pre-Roe statutes and so-called “trigger law” passed last year, criminalizes the act of performing an abortion or aiding someone in receiving an abortion through threats of heavy fines, litigation and jail time. This includes providing abortion pills, or any other procedure or method used in the completion an abortion, but it stops short of criminalizing mothers. There is some differing interpretation about when each of these laws will take effect.
Both Pojman and Parma said their organizations are firmly against criminalizing mothers.