GOP Judges: Texas Can Ban Life-Saving Emergency Abortion Care

Andrea Grimes
8–13 minutes

Plus: More abortion rights ballot initiatives are coming up this year

Here’s another edition of Hard to Believe It’s Only Tuesday, a weekly roundup of the top headlines, tweets, toks, takes, and more in abortion news. You can always email me (andrea.grimes@gmail.com, or grimesandrea@proton.me for more sensitive inquiries) or DM me on instagram with action items, takes, and news clips. This post is probably too long for email, so click the headline above or head to the HTBIOT page to get the full read in your browser, because you don’t want to miss this week’s Goodnight and Good Dunk!

photo via edenpictures on flickr/creative commons

The big takeaway: Tuesday, a George W. Bush appointee and two Trump appointees on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ abortion bans supersede federal laws that allow doctors to use their best judgment to provide life-saving abortions. Via Chris Geidner at Law Dork:

The ruling means that if a doctor in a Texas emergency room decides a person needs an abortion to stabilize them and it would not be allowed under Texas’s more-limited exceptions to its abortion ban, Texas law controls and the abortion is banned. Even outside of Texas, under the ruling, HHS cannot enforce the guidance against members of the two anti-abortion medical groups.

This is really grim, chilling stuff on a number of levels:

  • Texas law is already notoriously and deliberately unclear when it comes to how, when, and whether doctors may use their best judgment to provide life-saving abortions.
  • To wit: there’s no such thing as abortion ban “exceptions” and the sooner everybody gets on the same page on that, the better we’ll all be.
  • OB-GYNs are leaving Texas and other abortion-ban states in record numbers. This is a desirable outcome for the Republican Party and anti-abortion lobbyists.
  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is already absolutely and openly chomping at the bit to put an abortion provider in prison for life.
  • The upshot of this being that, even if the OB-GYNs who remain in Texas believe an abortion is necessary to save a pregnant person’s life, they must risk life in prison, financially devastating fines, and the loss of their medical licenses if they do not defer to Texas’ more stringent abortion bans, which were written not by doctors but by right-wing Christian politicians, most but not all of them cisgender men, whose sole aim is to outlaw and criminalize abortion, prosecute pregnancy loss, and incarcerate providers and abortion supporters.

The Texas case has a counterpart out of Idaho (in the Ninth Circuit), which means this issue is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court. Read the whole LawDork post linked below for a more in-depth analysis.

The Top Headlines

The Takes

  • Writer Danielle Campoamor is in Teen Vogue with a thoughtfully reported piece about ”the abortion stories you don’t hear” post-Roe, to wit: the many thousands of everyday abortion stories (and everyday couldn’t-get-an-abortion stories).
  • Writer Susan Rinkunas is in Slate with a look at a proposed abortion-related ballot amendment in Arkansas, a total-ban state, that would allow abortions up to 18 weeks. Roe, of course, protected abortion up to around 24 weeks. She writes: “Should states looking to get abortion rights into their constitutions do so according to the previous standard of allowing abortion access until “viability,” the point when a fetus could technically survive outside of the uterus, which is typically 24 weeks? Or—because the past few decades have shown that 24 weeks is a flawed, arbitrary line—should reproductive rights advocates working at the state level be pushing for unfettered abortion access instead?“
  • Irish writer Paula Dennan wonders in her newsletter: “How many reports will it take to improve Ireland’s abortion law?” There’s a great repository of abortion-related resources at the bottom of the post!
  • Repro lawyer Bridgette Dunlap elaborates on her recent Kansas City Star op-ed about a Missouri abortion-related ballot initiative.

The Tweets/Toks/Grams

  • A political word from the Buckle Bunnies Fund‘s Makayla Montoya-Frazier:

The Fuck Are We Supposed to Do About It?

  • 👕 SWAG OF THE WEEK! 👕
  • 🙋🏻 New York: The New York Abortion Access Fund is looking for volunteers; applications close Monday, January 8.
  • ☕ Columbia, SC: Join the Palmetto State Abortion Fund, Planned Parenthood Votes! South Atlantic, and the ACLU of South Carolina for a pro-abortion power hour on Monday, January 8.
  • ⚖️ Online, for lawyerfolk: Join If/When/How and the Birth Rights Bar Association for a CLE-eligible virtual training series on birth justice beginning Wednesday, January 24th.
  • 🥂 The Carolinas: The Carolina Abortion Fund’s second annual gala is Saturday, February 3, 2024.
  • 🔬 Anywhere, for abortion fund leaders: Participate in a UCSF study!
  • 🦺 St. Louis area: Illinois’ Hope Clinic is looking for clinic escorts. Here’s how to learn more.
  • 🚗 Kentucky: The Kentucky Health Justice Network is looking for volunteer drivers and case managers. Here’s where to sign up.
  • 📱 North Texas: The Texas Equal Access Fund is looking for bilingual Spanish-speaking volunteers for their text line. Here’s where to sign up.
  • 📥 Anywhere: Looking for a job in repro? ReproJobs can help you spruce up your resume.
  • 🤠 Texas: Local teen-friendly businesses in in Bryan, College Station, Lubbock, or San Angelo can become pickup spots for repro kits assembled by Jane’s Due Process. Here’s the application form.
  • ⛰️ Southwestern Virginia and Appalachia: The New River Abortion Access Fund is looking for volunteers.
  • 🗳️ Anywhere, U.S.: Hey Jane x Vote America helps prep voters to support pro-abortion policies and candidates

Goodnight and good dunk — From Reckon, a rundown of five of 2023’s worst people for reproductive justice.

That’s all for this week. I’m sure I’ve missed something you’d like to see featured in this roundup, for I am but one woman with a computer and an abortion-news-induced drinking problem. Holler at me — andrea.grimes@gmail.com or grimesandrea@proton.me for more sensitive inquiries, or DM me on Instagram, and I’ll try to add follow-ups as I’m able.

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One response to “GOP Judges: Texas Can Ban Life-Saving Emergency Abortion Care”

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