Republicans in the Texas state legislature are proposing myriad anti-abortion and anti-reproductive rights bills, including at least three that target access to abortion medication.
The bills come just one month after state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) filed a lawsuit against a New York doctor in December for sending abortion medication to a woman living in Texas.
The state already bans almost all forms of abortion. But shield laws, as well as access to telehealth services, allowed around 2,800 people in Texas per month to have an abortion through medication from April to June of last year.
Abortion medication is by far the most common method for having an abortion in the U.S., with usage of abortion pills increasing since the coronavirus pandemic and after the Supreme Court upended federal abortion rights in 2022.
House Bill 1339 would reclassify abortion pills as “controlled substances,” implementing greater legal restrictions on them, including harsher punishments for those found in possession of, distributing or seeking such medication. The proposal is similar to a law that passed in neighboring Louisiana last year.
House Bill 1651 would classify abortion medication that is sent through the mail, without an in-state prescription, as a deceptive trade practice.
And House Bill 991 would allow Texas residents to file lawsuits against websites that provide information on how to obtain an abortion or abortion medication to people in the state.
Other pieces of anti-reproductive rights legislation are also being proposed by Texas Republicans, including some that aim to make it easier to spread disinformation about abortion. House Bill 196, for example, would require schools to teach that “human life begins at conception,” a concept that goes against established medical science.
Texas bans abortion in almost all circumstances, and, according to the Guttmacher Institute, is one of the most restrictive states in the country when it comes to abortion law. Although the state purports to allow the procedure in cases where a pregnant person’s life is at risk, statutes on the books are so vaguely written that medical providers often face situations where it is unclear whether or not providing an abortion would constitute a crime.
Democratic lawmakers have proposed bills that would alleviate some of these problems. One proposal, House Bill 395, would expand abortion rights to include protections in cases of rape or incest. Another bill, House Bill 257, would give a clearer explanation to health care providers regarding when exceptions can be made to save the life of the pregnant person. However, those two bills are unlikely to advance and may not even reach the committee level stage, as Republicans will likely bury them.
Since Texas has imposed its abortion bans, there have been numerous reports of people coming close to dying or suffering irreparable damage to their health as a result of the restrictions. The state’s abortion ban has also resulted in at least three known deaths, according to research from ProPublica, although it’s likely that more have gone unreported.
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