Published

October 02, 2024

AUSTIN, TX — The latest monthly report from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission on induced terminations of pregnancies (ITOP) released today shows that doctors continue to perform abortions to save women’s lives, proving that claims by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’ presidential campaign are completely false. The Harris-Walz campaign claims that doctors cannot or are not willing to perform abortions in cases when the pregnancy endangers a woman’s life in Texas and other states with pro-life laws.

For example, when the Texas Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Texas’ pro-life laws in Zurawski v. Texas, Harris said, “This Texas Supreme Court ruling means women will continue to be denied access to necessary medical care, putting their health and lives at risk.” At a recent campaign speech in Georgia, Harris falsely claimed that doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action.” Yet, in Zurawski, the Court emphasized that “the law does not require that a woman’s death be imminent or that she first suffer physical impairment” before performing an abortion under the medical necessity exception in Texas’ abortion law

From July 2022 through May 2024, the first 23 months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, reported elective abortions in Texas quickly dropped from thousands per month to zero. However, during this period, doctors reported performing 116 medically necessary abortions, with three reported in May, all in hospitals. The monthly average of reported abortions for medical necessity (to protect the life or health of the woman) after Dobbs is 5.0. That number is comparable to the monthly average before Dobbs (January 2022 through May 2022), which is 2.3.

“The latest report continues to reaffirm that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s alarmist claims about the pro-life laws in Texas and other states are without merit,” said Amy O’Donnell, Texas Alliance for Life’s Communications Director. “Pro-life laws in Texas and other states continue to save unborn babies from abortion while also protecting women’s lives in those rare and tragic cases where pregnancy endangers a pregnant woman’s life or health.”

The Texas data are consistent with data from other states with pro-life laws that have reported abortions for medically necessary reasons after Dobbs:

• Idaho 5
• Mississippi 7
• Missouri 64
• West Virginia 29

Source: “Medically Necessary Abortions After Dobbs: What, if Anything, Has Changed?” by Maura Quinlin and Paul Linton, 39 Notre Dame J. L., Ethics & Pub—Pol’y (forthcoming 2025).

“Since the Court overturned Roe, no doctor in any state has been prosecuted by a district attorney, sanctioned by a medical board, or sued, and no pregnant woman has lost her life because of the provisions of an abortion law,” O’Donnell added.

Background

• On May 31, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court, in Zurawski v. Texas, recently 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 2021, the Texas Legislature passed, and Gov. Greg Abbott signed HB 1280, the Human Life Protection Act, which protects unborn children from elective abortion beginning at conception. That law has an exception for medically necessary abortions when 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.” That law went into effect shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
• Shortly afterward, on June 21, the Texas Medical Board, which regulates physicians, issued rules explaining the law, including the provision that the medical necessity exception does not require the woman’s death to be imminent before a doctor can perform an abortion.

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

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