Today is an especially difficult day for the pro-life movement thanks to the Supreme Court decision striking down part of a Texas pro-life law that protects pregnant women and unborn children from shoddy abortion practitioners and dilapidated abortion clinics. But there’s some good news.
When they filed a lawsuit against the Texas law, the abortion businesses behind the suit and Planned Parenthood did not challenge the law’s prohibition on abortions that take place at 20 weeks or later, a provision based on evidence that demonstrates the baby can feel pain at that stage. The good news is that that abortion ban, despite today’s Supreme Court ruling, still stands.
“Because the abortion industry never challenged the provision of HB 2 which protects pain-capable preborn children from excruciating dismemberment abortions from 20 weeks gestation, a measure on the 2013 Priority Pro-Life Legislative Agenda, spearheaded by Texas Right to Life, that provision of the law will remain in effect,” the pro-life group Texas Right to Life informed LifeNews.
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The group’s legislative director John Seago added:
Having exploited all avenues in Texas to dismantle the constitutional and solidly-constructed Pro-Life Omnibus Bill of the 2013 Legislative Session, House Bill 2, abortion zealots ultimately appealed to the Supreme Court. The sensible women’s health legislation of HB 2 was crafted to provide a crucial layer of defense against the predatory and profit-driven antics of Big Abortion. The Court failed women and preborn children this morning. Indeed, the only party which will benefit from today’s majority decision is the abortion industry, which exploits every means available to leech profit from abortion clients. Texas played a key role in the catastrophic Supreme Court ruling which first legalized abortion in 1973, and our work in Texas is far from finished.
The National Right to Life Committee, which drafted the language of the 20-week abortion ban, is pleased that it remains in place.
As the pro-life group informed LifeNews: “The provisions struck by the Court today were part of a broader pro-life omnibus package passed by the Texas legislature in 2013. Texas HB2 also included National Right to Life model language to protect unborn children who are capable of experiencing great pain when being killed by dismemberment or other late abortion methods. An unborn child is capable of feeling pain by 20 weeks after fertilization and earlier. That provision of the law was unchallenged in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.”
