By: stabahriti@insider.com (Sam Tabahriti)
Amy O’Donnell, a spokeswoman for Texas Alliance for Life, told the Dallas Morning News: “While the penal code in Texas recognizes an unborn child as a person in our state, the Texas transportation code does not specify the same. And a child residing in a mother’s womb is not taking up an extra seat. And with only one occupant taking up a seat, the car did not meet the criteria needed to drive in that lane.”
By: Dave Lieber
I asked Amy O’Donnell, spokeswoman for Texas Alliance for Life, an anti-abortion group, what she thought of this unusual situation.
She replied, “While the penal code in Texas recognizes an unborn child as a person in our state, the Texas Transportation Code does not specify the same. And a child residing in a mother’s womb is not taking up an extra seat. And with only one occupant taking up a seat, the car did not meet the criteria needed to drive in that lane.”
By: Dianne Solis and Wendy Selene Pérez
At the Texas Alliance for Life, executive director Joe Pojman said his group will push the issue further in the 2024 presidential elections. Mailing or using couriers to bring in misoprostol and mifepristone is illegal, but he doesn’t see extradition of a foreigner happening.
“It is still illegal,” Pojman said. “It’s still a felony offense. But there is no way to extradite someone from Mexico or the Netherlands to stand trial in Texas, unless the Biden administration takes action.”
Pojman doesn’t see that happening with the Biden team, given the president’s position on Roe vs. Wade.
By: REENA DIAMANTE
It has not been used for nearly a half-century, but some abortion opponents believe it is fair game after Roe’s reversal.
“They have ceased doing abortions because of the threat of prosecution under that pre-Roe law,” Joe Pojman, executive director for Texas Alliance for Life, said. “I’m very grateful that for right now, it appears that unborn babies are not being aborted. Hopefully, those women are being told about the alternatives, the vast resources available to them if they choose to give birth to the child.”
By: Ali Linan
For Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, the decision could not come soon enough.
“We are ecstatic,” he said in a statement following the news.
With this win under their belt, Pojman said the anti-abortion movement will transition into a new phase – the “pro-life movement 2.0,” as he called it.
Rebecca Parma, senior legislative associate with Texas Right to Life, said the fight is not over in their view.
“This is not the end of the story; it’s really just the end of a chapter. And we’re moving into a new chapter in the pro-life movement,” she said.
Pojman said that although they anticipate plenty of lawsuits about the court decision, his organization will begin to concentrate greater effort “in providing compassionate alternatives to women with unplanned pregnancies.”
In that, Pojman said his group will continue to push for funding of the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program, to which state legislators have appropriated $100 million. The program provides counseling, material assistance and social services for up to three years after birth. The state budget accounts for helping about 150,000 women each year, Pojman said.
While the program is funded at the whims of the state Legislature, Pojman said he believes there is enough support for the program that he does not see it ending any time in the near future. He added that his organization will continue to monitor the results of the program.
“We have a goal of creating a society in Texas which truly is compassionate for women with unplanned pregnancies so that no woman seeks to have an abortion,” Pojman said. “We want women to have all the resources they need to successfully carry their babies to term, give birth to the babies, (then) keep the babies or place the babies for adoption and would feel 100% at peace with those options.”
Current law, including the state’s pre-Roe statutes and so-called “trigger law” passed last year, criminalizes the act of performing an abortion or aiding someone in receiving an abortion through threats of heavy fines, litigation and jail time. This includes providing abortion pills, or any other procedure or method used in the completion an abortion, but it stops short of criminalizing mothers. There is some differing interpretation about when each of these laws will take effect.
Both Pojman and Parma said their organizations are firmly against criminalizing mothers.
By: REESE OXNER AND ERIN DOUGLAS
Lawyers for anti-abortion groups argued that the 2004 case, McCorvey v. Hill, was wrongly decided.
“The final interpreter and the ultimate authoritative interpreter of state law is a state court, not some federal court, not even the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Paul Linton, special counsel for Texas Alliance for Life. “State prosecutors are not bound by that [2004] decision.”
The Texas District & County Attorneys Association on Friday wrote in an interim legislative update that the legal ambiguity could make prosecuting abortion cases difficult.
“How these existing laws interact … is anyone’s guess,” the association’s update read, “because the new ‘trigger law’ did not amend or repeal these existing crimes.”
The pre-Roe laws include more detailed provisions than Texas’ trigger ban, including the potential to charge anyone who “furnishes the means” for someone to obtain an abortion. The threat of criminal charges has been enough to chill both abortion procedures as well as funding for Texans to travel and obtain abortions outside the state.