AUSTIN, Texas — A bill recently introduced in the Texas legislature would revoke the medical licenses of physicians who perform abortions, with the exception of those deemed “necessary” to save the life of the mother or to save another baby when the mother is pregnant with multiples.
H.B. 86, introduced by Rep. Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, expands the existing enumerated prohibitions under which as physician’s license may be revoked. The measure was filed as Gov. Greg Abbott had called for a 30-day special legislative session, which began on July 18, and includes other pro-life bills.
Swanson’s bill would ban physicians from performing an unborn unless “there exists a condition that, in a physician’s reasonable medical judgment, so complicates the medical condition of the woman that, to avert the woman’s death or a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function, other than a psychological condition” or if “the woman is pregnant with multiple unborn children [and] the abortion is necessary to ensure that at least one unborn child is born alive and healthy.”
“The time to end abortion is here,” Swanson told Breitbart earlier this year. “As we approach the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, it is clear from science that the Court erred 44 years ago. While that remains the law of the land at present, Texas should not be in the business of licensing and thus endorsing its practice.”
Planned Parenthood has condemned the bill as an effort to strip away women’s reproductive choices.
“This bill is just another in a relentless wave of legislation aimed at chipping away at the right to safe, legal abortion,” Yvonne Gutierrez, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, told PopSugar. “It does nothing to improve the health and safety of women, and the politicians behind this legislation have only one objective: to push their extreme agenda onto Texans who don’t want or support these dangerous policies.”
As previously reported, a similar bill had been passed in Oklahoma last year, but was vetoed by Gov. Mary Fallin, who opined that the proposed text was too subjective and would “would not withstand a criminal constitutional legal challenge.”
“The bill is so ambiguous and so vague that doctors cannot be certain what medical circumstances would be considered ‘necessary to preserve the life of the mother,’” she said in a statement. “The absence of any definition, analysis or medical standard renders this exception vague, indefinite and vulnerable to subjective interpretation and application.”
Fallin also opined that the effort was not the proper way to end abortion—that it must be done by the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
But bill sponsor Sen. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, noted that one of the responsibilities of government is to protect life.
“Since I believe life begins at conception, it should be protected, and I believe it’s a core function of state government to defend that life from the beginning of conception,” he stated.
As previously reported, Philadelphia legal writer, educator and Christian apologist Francis Wharton, who wrote several books on American law, penned an entire chapter on abortion in his book “American Criminal Law,” which was published in 1855.
Wharton called abortionists “persons who are ready to degrade their humanity to this occupation” and stated in regard to abortion in general, “Such conduct cannot be too strongly condemned, and is the more deserving of receiving the punishment awarded for the criminal offense in question.”