Texas GOP Are Working Overtime to Make Pregnant Women More 'Killable'

They're not satisfied that pregnant women are already dying in droves in the state thanks to their extreme abortion ban. Here their diabolical new plans.

Photo by Devon Divine on Unsplash

Your might think that the Republican lawmakers who control the state’s legislature would be just a slight bit freaked out that since their extreme abortion ban became law, women in Texas are now nearly twice as likely to die as they were in 2021 before the first abortion ban law was passed.

Got that?

Pregnant Texas women are twice as likely to die when they are pregnant, giving birth or shortly after giving birth, versus women in states where abortion is still legal.

In fact, women in Texas, which has the highest maternal mortality rate in the country have a 155% risk of dying versus pregnant women in California, which has the lowest maternal mortality rate.

And pregnant Black women in Texas are now dying at 3 x the rate as white and Latina women.

Data now shows that abortions bans are deadly to the 62.7 million women and girls in all the states that have banned abortion. But no where more so than in Texas, where maternal mortality took a massive spike up 33% in 2023, the year after Roe V Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court when Texas enacted its ban, criminalizing abortion from conception.

All this data was compiled by the Gender Equity Policy Institute, which also reported that in comparison to the dire situation in abortion ban states, the states where abortion remains legal, maternal mortality actually dropped 21% in 2023.

But like I said, instead of these sky high numbers of dying women in Texas, convincing Republicans to investigate how to save the lives of pregnant women in their state, they just seem to have whetted the appetite of Republican lawmakers to see how many more women, they can legally send to their graves.

When you and I hear about young Texans like Josseli Barnica, Nevaeh Crain and Porsha Ngumezi , who all died while miscarrying their wanted babies because they couldn’t get timely treatment in hospitals, we mourn over the tragedy of the cruel situation.

But Texas politicians appear to think it’s an opportunity to double down on the killing.

It sure as hell seems that way because they are in the midst of trying to push through multiple bills - SB33, HB5510 and SB31into law by June 2nd, when their legislative session ends until Jan 12 2027, which will make it far, far more difficult for Texas women to get abortions.

That’s because multiple bills, going through stages in their House and Senate, would make it virtually impossible for Texas women to obtain medication abortion pills, make it illegal for anyone - including family members - to help pregnant women leave the state to get abortions AND another bill cuts off all access to information about abortion the state.

PREVENTING WOMEN FROM ESCAPING TEXAS

Yes, you read that right. Republican Senators and House Representatives have a diabolical plan to TRAP PREGNANT TEXAS women in the state and to CUT OFF ALL ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT ABORTION to absolutely everyone in Texas.

Talk about dystopian. If Republican lawmakers get their way they will make it illegal for anyone - husbands, boyfriends, mothers, friends - to help a pregnant Texan leave the state to get abortion pills for or go to a clinic where they can get a surgical abortion legally.

Texas Republicans have also decided that if any other person - anywhere in the country - gives money to a pregnant person to pay for gas, a plane ticket, a hotel, meals or a babysitter to watch the pregnant woman’s other kids, then they can be also be civilly charged with ‘aiding and abetting an abortion.’

Each violation comes with a $100,000 payment to the ‘bounty hunter’ plus they will be forced to pay for the bounty hunter’s lawyer and their court costs. Yikes! As if a babysitter or a typical Texas family could pay that monster fine for helping their loved one.

‘Aiding and abetting’ also includes driving a pregnant person out of state or potentially just accompanying them on an airplane flight to carry their bags or make sure they are OK.

Guess what the planned criminal punishment is for anyone who ‘aids and abets’ an abortion is?

Up to 99 years in jail because giving a woman an abortion in Texas is a first degree homicide felony. You read that right. If a husband drives his wife out of the state for the procedure - he is aiding and abetting murder.

And just because someone who helps a pregnant woman doesn’t live in Texas, they will not be free from prosecution

As Texan Amanda Zurawski, who nearly died from sepsis when her water broke at 18 weeks tells me, her mother was “flabbergasted” to learn that if this law was in place when Amanda she could have faced the long arm of Texas law.

That’s because when Amanda was forced to wait until she was near death to get needed abortion, her mom have offered to buy Amanda and her husband Josh, plane tickets to leave the state.

COULD THEY CHARGE WOMEN WITH FELONIES?

As if all these proposed bills aren’t enough, one likely to pass law, SB31, will revive a 1925 abortion ban law which charges that anyone who ‘furnishes the means’ for a pregnant person to get an abortion - whether it’s medical providers who perform the procedure abortion or loved ones who help a woman obtain any type of abortion - can be criminally charged and imprisoned for up to five years,

These Texas lawmakers also don’t care that prosecuting people in the other 49 states who defy their anti abortion laws is unconstitutional. They will try nonetheless to either criminally charge or allow bounty hunters to civilly sue anyone, anywhere who aids and abets a Texas woman access an abortion.

They literally want to turn Texas’s pregnant women into lepers untouchables - who no one will help for fear that Texas’s anti anti- abortion zealot Attorney General will charge them with homicide or that a vengeful husband or boyfriend will try to collect a $100,000 grand from them civilly.

Paxton has already famously sued New York state doctor Maggie Carpenter for treating a pregnant Texas woman through telemedicine and prescribing and sending her abortion pills.

NY state Attorney General James pledged to protect Dr Carpenter and other NY state abortion providers from Republican legal predators like Paxton. And thankfully a New York county clerk blocked Paxton from filing his lawsuit in The Empire State.

FYI Dr. Carpenter was also targeted by right wing Republican Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry who is trying to extradite her to that state to face a charge of criminal abortion for sending abortion pills to a patient there.

Texas and Louisiana are salivating over the prospect of taking their war against states where abortion is legal, all the way to the Supreme Court in a battle of state V state.

Unconstitutional is the name of the game for another proposed Texas law - HB5510.

You might want to take a seat before I tell you this one since it’s so insanely Handmaid’s Tale or George Orwellian 1984.

Texas Republicans want to block off all internet access to every single website or article that provides Texans with any information about how to access either abortion pills or a surgical abortion in another state.

That means that websites for abortion clinics, for abortion pill providers, for pharmaceutical companies which make abortion pills or which have newspaper and website articles with any information about abortion clinics or abortion pills, even medical journals, would all have to be blocked from being seen in Texas.

And the publishers, editors, writers and even designers of any of those sites or articles could be civilly charged with $100,000 for each violation!

Even payment Apps like Venmo, Zelle or PayPal , which could be used to pay for abortion medication or surgical abortions, would have to be blocked from the state, under the bill, HB5510.

God knows about credit cards, since of course they could be used for payments as well.

This sounds wildly unconstitutional since we still have the First Amendment right to free speech and freedom of the press, which is supposed to guarantee freedom of information.

“There are all kinds of constitutional problems with this bill - the privileges of people to travel between states” Texas civil rights lawyer, Austin Kaplan tells me. “ They’re going to create a ban for all sorts of constitutionally protected things - speech about abortion, speech about access to abortion pills, speech about women’s healthcare.”

“But the ( Republican )legislators don’t pay personally when they pass unconstitutional legislation.They don’t pay for lawyers . And there’s no political price to pay for passing unconstitutional laws. If you keep getting re-elected ( which they do).”

And these same Texas Republicans did pass the very first abortion ban in the country - SB8 - which used a bounty law to allow anybody in the country to sue abortion doctors in Texas.

That law passed in 2021, a year ahead of the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe, and the right wing extremist Republican majority on the Supreme Court have allowed it to stand to this day.

WHY THEY WON’t STOP KILLING WOMEN

So, is it any surprise that Texas Republican lawmakers have zero incentive to try to stop killing their female citizens. It costs them nothing politically. In 2024 Republicans won bigger in Texas than in 2020 - abortion bans, women dying and all!

Despite this, courageous Texas women and their lawyers have been fighting the Texas abortion bans and now these proposed new laws, in both the courts and in public opinion.

One of those brave women, Lauren Miller, was part of the Zurawski V State of Texas lawsuit trying to clarify which exceptions would allow a woman in Texas to get a legal abortion before having to get close to death.

Miller and one of her twin sons risked death when her other twin son was diagnosed in utero with a fatal fetal condition, trisomy 18. Lauren was desperate for Texas doctors to perform a ‘fetal reduction abortion’ on the unhealthy twin who would miscarry and cause her healthy son to die as well.

The pregnancy made her so ill that she was hospitalized with dehydration and her kidneys risked failing. Yet under Texas’s strict abortion ban she still didn’t qualify for that fetal reduction abortion.

She desperately fled the state to safe the life of her healthy twin, Henry, now a healthy two year-old.

She has been actively fighting for an amendment to the SB31 bill - which could open the door to women themselves being prosecuted for getting an abortion - and she wants to warn Texas women as well about the other bills I’ve been telling you about here.

“It’s very clear (Texas Republican lawmakers) want us in this horrifying level of subjugation,” she tells me. “We have an attorney general in Texas who thinks we’re disposable. I seriously wonder if he wakes up every day wishing we could be more killable.”

Because the new proposed Texas anti abortion bans bills are so radical and dangerous - after all, if Texas passes them, other Red states will follow - I will be writing an upcoming series on them . Stay tuned.