By: Constitutional Nobody

“We are grateful that the Texas Supreme Court affirmed the protections in Texas law for the unborn baby in this case,” said Amy O’Donnell, Texas Alliance for Life’s communications director. “Texas Alliance for Life strongly supports the law, as passed by the Texas Legislature, that protects unborn babies from abortion but also protects the lives and health of pregnant mothers through limited exceptions.”

The Supreme Court pointed out that Texas’ law allows abortions when a pregnancy endangers a mother’s life or risks substantial impairment of a major bodily function (such as fertility) in a doctor’s reasonable medical judgment, an objective standard.

By: Peter Holley

Amy O’Donnell, a spokesperson for Texas Alliance for Life, another advocacy group that opposes abortion rights, pointed to the state’s existing health and safety code, in which ectopic pregnancies, pregnancies in which the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, and miscarriages are not considered abortions. In other scenarios in which a pregnant patient’s life or health are at risk, O’Donnell and other like-minded activists say doctors can perform what they call a “separation” of an unborn child from its mother—terminology echoed in a fact sheet produced by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a right-to-life organization based in Washington, D.C., that advocates for the idea that human life begins at conception. Like other anti-abortion advocates, O’Donnell argues that Roe’s reversal does not cause undue risk to pregnant women because the health conditions that would require abortion as a means of saving their lives or their long-term health are “very rare in modern science.” When those conditions do arise, she said, medical exceptions in the law adequately address those cases. “When a pregnant mother faces a life-threatening situation, an induced abortion that aims to kill the child is not the answer,” she said. “There are many ways to deal with this situation that do not seek to take the life of the child.”

By: Fred Cantu

Pro-life groups saw it as the end of the line for a law they believe protected unborn children since 1854. Joe Pojman with Texas Alliance for Life adds, “It made abortion legal in Texas and in all the other states, legal throughout the entire 9 months of pregnancy.”
But others saw the high court’s ruling as a new beginning for women.

Dyana Limon-Mercado with Planned Parenthood Texas Votes explains, “When you think about the ways certain communities’ rights to their own bodies, to their own labor, to their own futures have been restricted over the history of America, the decision around Roe v. Wade was fundamental to guaranteeing that right, particularly to women who become pregnant.”

By: David Montgomery

Joe Pojman, a former aerospace engineer who is now executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, said the law “would completely protect unborn children from abortion beginning at conception.

“That would be the fulfillment of our dreams and goals for the last 50 years.”

But Cain and Capriglione, along with anti-abortion leaders like Pojman, emphatically dismiss the possibility of prosecuting women who get abortions, saying the criminal offenses should apply only to doctors and others who perform the procedure.

Texas’ pre-Roe abortion statute, which originated in 1854, “never even contemplated making … any penalties for the woman who has the abortion,” Capriglione said, “and my bill doesn’t either.”