With HB2, Texas conservatives thought they had host clinics performing abortions on the petard of the state’s “legitimate interest” in seeing that medical procedures were done with a degree of safety. The law contained enough restrictions and requirements that the twenty remaining clinics in Texas were about to be cut down to a handful.
But in June, the Supreme Court rejected HB2 soundly. The court pointed back to a 1992 decision that said making unnecessary regulations simply for the purpose of putting an obstacle in place was an undue burden. In fact, it’s the textbook definition of an undue burden. In the decision, Justice Breyer dismantled HB2, showing that it was a massive case of the legislature trying to be too clever by half, and stacking up hurdles where they simply weren’t necessary.
“[t]he great weight of evidence demonstrates that, before the act’s passage, abortion in Texas was extremely safe with particularly low rates of serious complications and virtually no deaths occurring on account of the procedure.”
The law was ruled unconstitutional and sent back to Texas in shreds.
But that was June. With a couple of months of summertime thinking under their hats, Texas conservatives have determined that the best way to address this is to attack the facts.
There is no recent record of any Texas women dying from complications related to abortion. But even though these statistics come straight from the conservative state’s department of health, anti-abortion advocates have decided not to believe them.
Convinced that abortion providers are hiding scary data that would invalidate Justice Breyer’s argument, legislators are pushing clinics to release every more data. Except that more data just seems to keep confirming what’s already known—pregnancy is far more dangerous than an abortion.
While Texas legislators fumble for a new approach, Governor Greg Abbot has passed an executive order requiring that fetuses be buried or burned. Because anti-choice fanatics can always hope to heap on shame.