Everything’s bigger, better and slightly more bizarre in Texas—including their pro-life attempts. Last year, Texas lawmakers tried to force women who have miscarriages and abortions to bury their fetal tissue. And now the Texas Senate has passed a bill that prevents parents from suing medical providers in the event that their babies are born with disabilities, even when the provider knew about the condition in advance but failed to disclose this information to the parents.
Senate Bill 25, which will now be sent to the Texas House, prevents parents from suing their medical provider 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 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.
Talk about an incredible and gross infringement of privacy! Should this law pass, according to Texas, doctors would get to make decisions for would-be parents and decide, without their consent, that they have to choose to bring children into the world with disabilities. How is this any different from doctors lying to their patients? Oh, wait. It’s not.
“SB 25 would allow doctors to lie to their patients,” Heather Busby, executive director at NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, the reproductive healthcare advocacy group, told The Huffington Post earlier this month.
“[It] is another thinly veiled attempt to prevent Texans from accessing their constitutional right to abortion,” Busby reiterated Tuesday.
Add doctors in Texas to the list of the many people who get to make decisions for women about their bodies when it comes to abortion—parents/legal guardians, judges, husbands … everyone except actual women themselves. It’s been said before time and time again but is worth repeating. This kind of insanity would not be happening if men could get pregnant—end of story.