Republicans pivoting from abortion
After midterms, GOP gave priority to related health bills
Republican state lawmakers walked out of the 2021 legislative session celebrating a novel sixweek abortion ban.
They cheered again last year when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing them to outlaw abortions almost entirely — with no exceptions for rape or incest and only a slim exemption when a mother’s life is at risk.
And then came campaign season.
GOP leaders struck a softer tone, appealing to centrist voters who could sway the outcome of the midterm election. Some said they were open to an exception for rape and incest, while Gov. Greg Abbott and others said they wanted to clarify the laws to ensure doctors could treat patients with life-threatening pregnancies.
Now, in the middle of the 2023 legislative session, few Republicans are willing to touch the issue. Democrats have tried and failed to roll back some of the restrictions, and many of their GOP colleagues are instead pivoting to bipartisan proposals bolstering health care access or aiding new parents. But even that has been contentious among some conservatives.
“They got a political win, and pushing it more now might either make them look extreme or highlight the fact that they’re out of step with where most Texans are on the abortion issue,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “Focusing on women’s health lets Republicans soften the edges of a controversial and divisive policy.”
More than 70 percent of Texans support legal access to abortion in cases of rape or incest, if the mother’s life is seriously endangered or if there is a strong chance of a serious birth defect. More than half support access in other circumstances, like if a family has low income or if someone would be a single parent, according to a February poll by the Texas Politics Project.
A handful of Republicans, mostly more conservative members, have filed bills to hold more parties accountable for helping someone obtain the procedure. Some have gone even further, targeting emergency contraceptives like Plan B.
State Sen. Drew Springer, RMuenster, filed Senate Bill 1440 to hold credit card companies liable for processing any transac
tions to deliver abortion pills. That’s on top of a law the Legislature passed two years ago making it a crime to prescribe the drug via mail.
He said bills like his are part of the “cleanup” after the Legislature passed the abortion bans in 2021, because “we just don’t dream of how people will cheat the system.” Overall, he said, GOP lawmakers came back to Austin in January with the goal of “protecting what we’ve passed in the prior sessions.”
As of Friday, just one bill filed and tagged under “abortion” had been scheduled for a committee hearing. It’s Senate Bill 959, by Sen. Donna Campbell, RNew Braunfels, that would prevent open-enrollment charter schools from “giving taxpayer resources to abortion providers.”
Republicans in both chambers are focusing instead on a slate of bills that aim to bolster some family services and extend health care coverage for new moms. In the House, state Rep. Toni Rose, D-Dallas, is carrying a bipartisan bill to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage from two months to 12 months after birth. It’s a priority bill for House Speaker Dade Phelan.
Rose has filed this legislation for the past three sessions, and the House passed it in 2021. But when it headed to the Senate, lawmakers rolled it back to six months — a provision that has not been approved by the federal government, formally leaving the policy at 60 days. In the meantime, low-income parents have had access to continuous postpartum Medicaid coverage through a federal COVID-19 public health emergency, but that is set to expire at the end of the month.
“Now that women are going to be required in Texas to go fullterm with their babies, we need to make sure that they have the health care that they need in order to have those babies,” Rose said, adding that she believes this is the session that lawmakers will “finally resolve this issue.”
The proposal appears to have bipartisan support in the Senate, too, though Rose said she hasn’t gotten an assurance that it will pass. The bill earned widespread support at a committee hearing on Thursday, including from the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, and Springer said he would support the measure.
In the upper chamber, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has prioritized Senate Bill 24, which would rebrand and expand the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program, which funds a network of crisis pregnancy centers throughout the state. They provide services like counseling, prenatal care, parenting classes and referrals to social programs.
Democrats have criticized the initiative for a lack of oversight, and several centers involved in it — often religiously affiliated — have been known to provide medical misinformation about abortion. Few offer access to contraception.
The new legislation would codify the program and instead call it the Texas Pregnancy and Parenting Support Network. It has overwhelming support from GOP senators, and 10 have signed on as joint authors.
Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, wants to provide paid parental leave to all state employees. Senate Bill 222 would ensure six weeks of paid leave after giving birth, adopting a child or having a baby via surrogate, as well as two weeks of paid leave if their spouse has a baby.
It was passed out of committee last week and now heads to the Senate floor.
Blair Williams, the policy and advocacy strategist for reproductive rights at the ACLU of Texas, said the focus on family policies, while positive steps, ignores the bigger issue at play — “that people should have access to abortion for whatever reason they are facing.”
“In my opinion, this is absolutely an attempt for Republicans to rebrand their brutal attacks on abortion as very promother, pro-family rhetoric, which is just simply not how this is working in real life,” she said.
Exceptions are unlikely
Nichols and state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, are the only two GOP senators still in office who publicly supported an exception for rape and incest last year, but neither has pursued legislation to codify the change. Their offices did not respond to requests for comment.
Abbott was the highest-profile Republican to suggest revisiting the ban to clarify that abortions are legal when the mother’s life is at risk. The law as written requires a “substantial” threat to a patient’s life or a fatal diagnosis for the fetus — but doctors across the state have been unsure of how to interpret that language, fearing criminal, financial and professional penalties if they go through with the procedure.
The situation has led to highprofile allegations — and now, a lawsuit — that Texans have been denied abortions despite having dangerous or unviable pregnancies.
But the governor has not raised the issue since being reelected to a third term in November, and it was absent from his list of emergency items for the legislative session. His office did not respond to a request for comment.
State Rep. Mihaela Plesa, a Democrat whose Collin County district was one of the most competitive races in the last election, debated a GOP candidate last year who said she supported rape and incest exceptions. Other Republicans in tight races — including some who won — did the same.
Plesa authored bills this session that would create exceptions for most children, for women over 35 or with high-risk pregnancy conditions, and invitro fertilization patients.
“Nobody has come to talk to me to talk about this issue,” Plesa said. “They’ve come to talk to me about other social issues. They want me to not honor gay and lesbian people, to basically erase LGBT history, but they are not willing to talk about the social issue of women dying in our state.”
Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, and Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, have both filed bills to make clear that doctors should prioritize the life of the mother when evaluating the need for an abortion.
Miles’ Senate Bill 2454 would institute a “good faith” requirement, making doctors immune to penalties if they sincerely believe a patient needs an abortion. Plesa and Eckhardt are carrying companion bills that would “prioritize the health of a pregnant individual over the health of the fetus … regardless of whether the treatment poses a risk of injury or death to the fetus.”
Eckhardt said some of her Republican colleagues have said the abortion ban went too far, even if they aren’t saying it publicly. She said their shift in tone, to support more family and health care policies, is a strategic way to address some of those concerns.
“If it can be placed in the frame of preventing children from getting pregnant, or if it can be placed in the frame of protecting a mother’s health and family health, I think we have a chance of sufficient bipartisan support” to ease some of the most restrictive laws, she said.