“We applaud the swift action of the Texas Attorney General’s office to defend Texas law, which protects the lives of unborn babies while allowing abortions in rare cases when abortion is necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life,” said Texas Alliance for Life Communications Director Amy O’Donnell. “While Texas law is clear, we believe that some doctors are not apprised of the actual language of the law, resulting in poor care for their patients. Professional organizations like the Texas Medical Association, ACOG, and the Texas Medical Board, are the proper sources of guidance and rules for physicians, not the courts. Judicial activism from the bench using non-medically defined terms opens the door for greater confusion.”
In August 2022, the Human Life Protection Act went into effect, protecting unborn babies from abortion beginning at conception. That law allows a physician to perform an abortion to save a mother’s life, when “in the exercise of reasonable medical judgment, the pregnant female . . . has 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.”