The Republican war on honesty continues. This week, the Texas Senate passed an extreme anti-choice bill that would allow doctors to withhold information from patients about their pregnancy if they think the news would encourage the patient to seek an abortion. Republicans pretend that it’s a “wrongful birth” bill meant to prevent doctors from being sued. In turn, I have a question — do pregnant patients tend to be particularly litigious to their doctors? From The Huffington Post:
Senate Bill 25, which will now be sent to the Texas House, prevents parents from suing their doctor if their baby is born with disabilities, even if that doctor discovered the condition during routine prenatal testing and failed to inform the parents.
The architects of the so-called “wrongful-birth” bill have argued it would protect children with disabilities and prevent doctors from facing unnecessary facing lawsuits. “It is unacceptable that doctors can be penalized for embracing the sanctity of life,” Senator Brandon Creighton (R-TX) said in a press release when he introduced the legislation last fall.
Sounds like an attempt to chip away at legal abortion access by any means necessary. Fortunately, anti-choice gynoticians have no chill and make their motives pretty clear. Reproductive rights advocates read in between the lines along ago.
“SB 25 is another thinly veiled attempt to prevent Texans from accessing their constitutional right to abortion,” Heather Busby, executive director at NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, the reproductive healthcare advocacy group, said in an e-mailed statement to The Huffington Post.
This type of bill is particularly egregious as it takes the micromanaging of the government Republicans love to a whole new level. Is anything too low for them?