Published

March 04, 2025

AUSTIN, TX — The latest Induced Termination of Pregnancy (ITOP) report from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), released on March 3, 2025, confirms that Texas’ pro-life laws are working as intended — protecting both women and unborn babies. The report verifies Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s recent statement that there is no need to amend the exception language in Texas’ principal abortion law, the Human Life Protection Act, which explicitly allows doctors to perform abortions in rare and tragic cases when medically necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life or health.

During a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle’s Texas Take podcast, Governor Abbott stated, “There have been hundreds of abortions that have been provided under this law, so there are plenty of doctors and plenty of mothers that have been able to get an abortion that saved their lives and protect their health and safety. So I know [that] the law as it currently exists can work if it is properly applied.”

“Governor Abbott is absolutely right — no changes to the medical necessity exception language in the law are needed,” said Amy O’Donnell, Communications Director for Texas Alliance for Life. “These numbers continue to prove that Texas’ pro-life laws are working as Governor Abbott and the Legislature intended, saving unborn lives while allowing doctors to provide medically necessary abortions when a woman’s life or health is at risk.”

During the first 28 months since the Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Texas doctors have reported performing 145 abortions under the medical necessity exception to save women’s lives or health through October 2024 — an average of five per month — with reported elective abortions dropping to zero. No doctor has been prosecuted, sued, or sanctioned for providing any of those abortions to save a woman’s life. No woman has lost her life for lack of an exception in the law.

“Doctors understand the law and can successfully treat pregnant women, even in rare and tragic circumstances that require a medically necessary abortion,” continued O’Donnell. “The Texas Supreme Court has twice affirmed that the law is clear for doctors to treat pregnant women, and the Texas Medical Board explained that in rules issued last summer. To the extent that some doctors or hospital attorneys still fail to fully understand the law, Texas Alliance for Life urges the Legislature to make medical and legal education available.”

Texas continues to provide substantial resources to support women and families. In its current budget, the state has allocated $165 million to the Thriving Texas Families program for alternatives to abortion and $400 million to women’s health services. Medicaid covers more than half of all births in Texas and includes 12 months of postpartum care for mothers. Texas Alliance for Life continues to defend these pro-life laws and advocate for policies that protect women and their unborn children while supporting families across the state.

Background:

• Texas pro-life laws explicitly allow doctors to perform abortions when a mother’s life or health is at risk from the pregnancy, as is evident in the text of the law and explained by the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Medical Board:

• • • Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, Texas’ Human Life Protection Act (HB 1280) went into effect, protecting the lives of unborn children from abortion beginning at conception. That law has an exception for medically necessary abortions when, in the “reasonable medical judgment” of the physician, the pregnancy causes “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.”

• • • On May 31, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court, in Texas v. Zurawski, determined that the exception in the Texas Human Life Protection Act is both constitutional and clear. Physicians may use “reasonable medical judgment” to determine whether a pregnancy requires a medically necessary abortion. In the unanimous decision, the Court wrote:

As our Court recently held [in In Re State of Texas], the law does not require that a woman’s death be imminent or that she first suffer physical impairment. Rather, Texas law permits a physician to address the risk that a life-threatening condition poses before a woman suffers the consequences of that risk. A physician who tells a patient, “Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,” and in the same breath states “but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances” is simply wrong in that legal assessment.

• • • In June 2024, the Texas Medical Board, which licenses and regulates physicians, addressed the life-of-the-mother medical exception in rules to provide guidance for physicians. The rules explained that, under Texas law, the threat to the mother’s life or health does not have to be imminent.

• Texas law’s definition of abortion explicitly allows doctors to treat women for an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion):

An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to:

(A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child;
(B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or
(C) remove an ectopic pregnancy.

Contact
Amy O’Donnell, Communications Director
512.477.1244 (o)
amy@texasallianceforlife.org

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