By: EMMA PLATOFF
To anyone who believes @MQSullivan’s account of this matter, may I offer to sell you some Florida swampland? I have lost count of how many times he and @EmpowerTexans have demonstrably lied about me and Texas Alliance for Life. #TXlege
By: LARA KORTE
It’s good timing for abortion opponents, who are concerned about Planned Parenthood’s further expansion into West Texas.
“We believe they would love to have the financial help of a city or hospital district or county in West Texas,” said Joe Pojman, president of Texas Alliance for Life. “But that’s not going to be possible now, because of SB 22.”
While abortion opponents say the bill is aimed at cutting off funding, they are also unsure about how the legislation could impact nonfinancial partnerships.
But they disagree with the notion that it will decrease access to contraception, cancer screenings and other health care provided by clinics that don’t perform abortions.
“It’s crying wolf,” Pojman said. “Absolutely untrue.”
He and other abortion opponents say that any services lost by cutting off taxpayer funds to Planned Parenthood and others will be supplemented by providers in the state’s Healthy Texas Women program.
By: Arya Sundaram
Meanwhile, Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, fears that any legal battle could uphold abortion rights while funneling potentially millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees to abortion providers. Those worries stem from a legal battle over a 2013 Texas statelaw that required doctors who performed abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and forced clinics to comply with the standards of ambulatory surgical centers.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down key provisions of that law in late 2016. The decision has been hailed by abortion rightsadvocates as their biggest Supreme Court victory since Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case that reaffirmed the constitutional right of abortion established in Roe v. Wade. The attorneys’ fees from that case still haven’t been resolved in court, but the state could pay roughly $4.5 million.
“That’s a big setback because it’d be a windfall for the abortion industry,” Pojman said. “More than a dozen cases are in the pipeline to overturn Roe v. Wade. We don’t need any more.”
By: ARYA SUNDARAM
SB 24 states that a physician must hand the patient a hard copy of the materials – an important clarification, according to Joe Pojman, the executive director for the Texas Alliance for Life. Current law says the information must be provided in a conversation or online.
By: Marissa Evans
Joe Pojman, executive director for the Texas Alliance for Life, acknowledged that Texas legislators are “much more sober” on anti-abortion bills this session, in part given the 2018 midterm elections. Democrats flipped 12 seats in the Texas House in the midterms, marking the biggest shift in the lower chamber since the 2010 election cycle. Given their narrower margin, Republican legislators in the majority “want to make sure that the time that is available for social issues involving abortion is very well spent,” Pojman said.
“No one is attributing the loss of Republicans to their support for the [abortion] issue,” Pojman said. “Nevertheless, I want to make sure the bills that are debated are going to have wide support among the public and voters in particular, and I think that will be the case.”
By: EMMA PLATOFF
Joe Pojman, the executive director of the anti-abortion group Texas Alliance for Life, said his organization investigates safety and other violations at abortion clinics through regular public information requests and conversations with protesters who stand outside clinics. He acknowledged that “it’s very difficult for us to know the scope of the problem” but suggested the attorney general’s office might have access to information that’s kept from the public.
“We do agree … that the Legislature should make a slight change to current law to allow concurrent prosecution between local authorities and DAs and the attorney general of Texas,” Pojman said. “We think there may be a problem because it might be the case that abortion laws are not properly being enforced uniformly across the state.”