Pregnant Women Can be Jailed for 2-5 years For Getting An Abortion :Texas Senate Passes Terrifying Bill

If Senate Bill 2880 becomes law - and odds are that it will - Texas will become the first state to lock up women & their loved ones, if they get abortions.

Lauren Miller, far right with fellow Zurawski plaintiffs, Amanda Zurawski, left & Hollie Cunningham, center

Hi readers - I warned you that this was coming. But even I really didn’t believe that zealous anti abortion Texas Republicans would have the audacity to push through state legislation that would criminalize pregnant women - so soon!

But they did! No doubt, inspired by the shamelessness of their ‘Dear leader’ Donald Trump, the Republican - dominated the Texas Senate has passed a hefty 24 page bill - SB2880 - packed with ways to punish pregnant women in Texas who dare to end their pregnancies.

Just how have the Republicans managed to become the first state to criminalize pregnant women for obtaining abortions?

Well, they’ve done it with the deviously written bill - SB2880 and its companion House bill, HB5510, which include two ‘hidden’ references to a 1925 Texas abortion law which makes it illegal for anyone to “furnish the means” for procuring an abortion for a pregnant person.

And yes, pregnant women can be charged with furnishing their own means for an abortion.

The criminal penalty for pregnant women and anyone who helps them get an abortion, is 2 to 5 years of prison time.

The law had been zombified for 50 years while Roe V Wade, which protected a woman’s right to an abortion, was the law of the land. But once the Supreme Court overruled Roe and allowed states to legislate abortion themselves, the 1925 Texas law was sprung from its coffin and became enforceable again.

The references seem hidden because the bill never clearly mentions the 1925 abortion law. Instead it lists the chapter, title number and revised statute, where the 1925 abortion law is found.

Senator Bryan Hughes, the Republican author of the bill did an outstanding job of burying the link to the 100 year old abortion ban.

The references are hidden because the bill never clearly mentions the 1925 abortion law. Instead it lists the chapter, title number and revised statute, where the hundred year -old abortion law is found.

THE NEW BILL SB2880 REVIVES TEXAS’S PRE ROE ABORTION BAN

I think the Republicans were stealthily trying to get this bill across the finish line and into law before Democrats, abortion choice supporters and the Texas general public caught on to the fact that pregnant women could be prosecuted if it became the law of the state.

And in fact they’re been pretty successful. Very little media in Texas has drawn attention to this jaw dropping fact. That’s why I’m telling you about it here.

Democratic Texas Senator, Carol Alvarado also caught what Bryan Hughes was up to. She called him out at the Senate debate on it on April 30.

“The most egregious point of SB 2880 is that it quietly revives Texas’s pre-Roe abortion ban by explicitly incorporating the 1925 law into the bill’s definition of criminal abortion law,” she pointed out.

“The 1925 law does not exclude women from prosecution and explicitly criminalizes ‘furnishing the means’ for an abortion — a vague clause that could be used to target those who assist abortion-related travel,” she added. “This bill will open the door to the criminalization of women seeking out-of-state abortions. The threat is not theoretical — it is written clearly into the text. This clause appears in no other abortion law currently on the books in Texas.”

Republican Senator Bryan Hughes, has deceptively called, the ‘Women and Child Protection Act’.

This guy is determined to force Texas women to give birth to babies even if they have been raped, are victims of incest or have discovered that they are carrying fetuses suffering from fatal fetal anomalies which will die before or just after birth.

The bill also clearly reveals that Hughes and his fellow Republican lawmakers are sooo PISSED that tens of thousands of Texas women have managed to escape from the state for surgical abortions in other ‘legal’ abortion states OR have ordered prescription abortion pills from out-of-state providers.

In 2023 over 35,000 Texas women fled to get abortions elsewhere, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

When Texas Republicans banned abortion from conception, especially didn’t foresee was how abortion pills, mailed in from doctors in states where abortion remains legal would answer the prayers of thousands of pregnant Texas women who couldn’t handle or afford a baby , or who had health issues which meant a pregnancy could put their lives at risk.

REPUBLICANS ARE TRYING TO TRAP PREGNANT WOMEN IN TEXAS

So now these anti abortion Republicans are trying to trap Texas women from leaving the state by threatening to put husbands, boyfriends, mothers, fathers, best friends, siblings or anyone else who ‘furnishes the means’ for their abortion in another state - behind bars.

‘Furnishing the means’ could mean driving a pregnant wife, girlfriend or daughter out of Texas, or paying for her gas money. It could mean traveling with her on an airplane to another state or paying for her hotel, food or even for child care while she away for her procedure.

It could even mean babysitting her children while she is away.

Talk about trying to make pregnant women toxic.

Now, let’s just review for a second. It has been illegal to get an abortion in Texas since 2021 - a year ahead of Roe being overturned - when the same Senator Bryan Hughes authored the ingenious Heartbeat Act using a ‘bounty’ mechanism to enforce the ban.

Under SB8 anyone from anywhere in the country could sue a Texas doctor or medical provider for performing an abortion. They could also sue anyone they suspected of aiding or abetting an abortion like a pharmacist or midwife. If they won in court, they could collect a bounty of $10,000.

But that all happened within the borders of Texas.

The new outrageousness and overreach in SB2880 is that now if a pregnant woman leaves the state and anyone aids or abets her in leaving Texas for a legal abortion, Texas wants to extend its long arms and charge her criminally plus also charge anyone who helps her including the doctors, nurses and clinics in other states that performed her surgical abortion or gave her abortion pills to take.

And yes, you read that right - even if a woman leaves Texas for an abortion in a state where it’s legal, Texas will stalk her and charge her .

On top of these criminal penalties, anyone who aids or abets her obtaining an abortion can also be sued civilly for $100,000 each by a bounty hunter who can be located anywhere in the country and frighteningly could be an angry ex boyfriend or husband.

However, the pregnant woman herself can’t be sued civilly. Just prosecuted criminally.

Well , there’s a relief, right???

Do you get the creep feeling that Republicans have become 1984 -style ‘Big Brothers’ watching over every one of their over 31 million residents and enlisting friends, neighbors, acquaintances, work colleagues, even pharmacy owners to spy on women they suspect of being pregnant and then report on them, if they believe they’ve had an abortion.

The $100,000 is an enticing incentive for spying on Texas women. And talk about a bonanza if a bounty hunter can score $100,000 each from multiple helpers.

Want an example of how this bill will work in real life to real people once it’s the law in Texas?

THERE WAS ONLY ONE WAY FOR LAUREN TO SAVE HER HEALTHY TWIN

Here’s one:

Dallas mom, Lauren Miller who was pregnant with much - wanted twin boys, learned at her 13 week ultrasound that one of her twins suffered from a fatal genetic condition, called trisomy 18 and was missing half of his brain.

That was a heartbreaking enough diagnosis for Lauren and her husband Jason, who were so excited that twins would be joining their toddler son, Logan, that they had already been looking for a bigger car and a double stroller.

However, Lauren’s doctors warned her that the probability of a miscarriage was so high with a trisomy 18 fetus that she was at risk of losing both babies.

The only way to save her healthy twin would be to get a single fetal reduction so that she could prevent a miscarriage of both twins. But the procedure had become illegal in Texas where lawmakers, who are not doctors, have written extremist abortion bans with almost no exceptions allowed.

Lauren, who became a plaintiff in the Zurawski V Texas case, trying to get the Texas Supreme Court to clarify which medical conditions can qualify a woman for an abortion, understandably fled Texas.

She was desperate to get to a clinic in Colorado to save her viable twin son, Henry, now a healthy two year-old.

What mother in her right mind, wouldn’t do that!

But thanks to Texas’s narrow-minded Republican lawmakers, who claim they are “pro life” but would have condemned Lauren’s healthy son to death, she and her family would have been victimized if SB2880 was the law of the state when she became pregnant in 2022.

A bounty hunter would have had a field day with her family: $100k for her husband who travelled with Lauren, $100k for her mom, who babysat her older son, now 6, while his parents were away and $100k for her dad who paid for his wife’s airplane ticket, so she could stay with Logan.

How absolutely nuts is this!

Nuts and dangerous.

But also a warning of similar laws to come in many more of the almost 20 Red abortion ban states. And possibly nationally if Donald Trump’s anti abortion supporters have their way.

Sadly, with Texas being the first state in the country to pass an abortion ban, we’ve already seen that what starts in Texas, doesn’t stay in Texas.

Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk and Russ Vought Trump’s author of Project 2025 - they all want a national abortion ban.

So readers please warn your friends and family to wake up and be prepared to fight for their right to control their own bodies!

And please ask them to Subscribe to this Substack channel. I would really appreciate it!! Thank you!