By: Lauren Caruba
Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, an anti-abortion group, said problems related to instrument sterilization were “inexcusable,” regardless of the clinic’s submitted corrective plan.
“We’ve very pleased that Whole Woman’s Health of San Antonio has closed permanently. It was not a well-run abortion facility,” Pojman said. “San Antonio does not need Whole Woman’s Health.”
By: Mary Tuma
But TAL’s second priority, says its founder and leader Joe Pojman, is to prohibit “wrongful birth” lawsuits against physicians who withhold information from patients about fetal anomalies, another bill that didn’t pass last session. “These suits send the wrong message by saying society thinks a child born with a disability has less value than a child who is healthy,” says Pojman.
The discord between the two groups stems from TRL’s ties to well-funded conservative group Empower Texans, and from the group’s aggressive penchant for anti-choice bills that are sure to face legal challenges (“Deep Divisions in Texas’ Powerful Anti-Choice Movement,” April 6). Unlike TRL, Alliance for Life adopts a “prudent” approach to bills; for instance, it cautions against adopting bans at less than 20 weeks and is pessimistic about the 5th Circuit upholding the 2017 D&E ban. “Those laws do very poorly in federal court; there’s precedent against the law that’s strongly against us,” says Pojman.
By: Lyanne A. Guarecuco
“We’re not suggesting that the Legislature pass any bills that would ban abortion … because those laws, under the foreseeable future, would be struck down as unconstitutional by the federal courts,” Pojman told the Observer. “Texas would be forced to pay attorneys’ fees for the plaintiffs.”
By: Nicole Cobler
“We’re not recommending that the legislature pass any bill that would not withstand a federal court challenge,” Pojman said. “This is not a good time to challenge Roe v. Wade. The outcome is predictable.”
By: Liz Teitz
The Texas Alliance for Life said in a statement on June 28 that they were disappointed with the U.S. Supreme Court decision, and that the organization would “scrutinize this decision, hostile as it is to reasonable safety regulations, to find ways to increase abortion facility safety regulations as much as possible.”
By: Alex Zielinski
The numbers “are much smaller than what one would expect,” said Joe Pojman, the executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, in an interview with Politico, adding that the data “defies common sense.”
TAL has indicated its intention to push clinics to release more data on abortion patients, in hopes of finding something to back their currently empty arguments.