Texas HB 2 Anything But Moderate (Re: Let’s Meet in the Middle)

In a recent blog post, one of my classmates argues that Texas’ recent abortion legislation is actually rather moderate and that pro-choice protests are largely unwarranted: “Let’s Meet in the Middle” [from Everything’s Bigger in Texas: Texas Government Issues].

The blogger clearly communicates her views in a remarkably succinct and level-headed manner, though I believe that her overall argument is weakened or perhaps negatively influenced by a lack of research. I would advise her and my other classmates to refer to Jordan Smith’s recent piece in The Austin Chronicle for an example of high quality journalism on the real impact of Texas HB 2.  

My classmate first considers the provision on a 20 week time limit for legal abortions and decides that this provision calls for “an extremely generous period of time” and implies that it may even be too generous – she asks, “If anyone should be angry about this piece of the legislation, shouldn't it be pro-life supporters, not pro-choice supporters?”

To this, I have to point out that the time limit really does very little to affect Texas abortions: most estimates agree that even before the bill passed, less than 1 percent of abortions took place after the 20 week period. However, my real issue is with my classmate’s stance on the new safety regulations being imposed on abortion clinics rather than her stance on the new time limit.

The blogger concedes that the upgrade costs the regulations impose on clinics that want to stay in business are absurd, but then argues that the regulations are still “somewhat moderate” rather than “very drastic. She blogs, HB 2 “could cost us a lot of money, and therefore I guess make getting an abortion a tiny bit harder” before saying that it is still moderate because of the time limit.

I completely disagree with my classmate’s suggestion that Texas abortion clinics are dirty or unprofessional back-alley places when she says, “if abortions are going to be legal, they should be done in clean, hospital like areas.”

Physicians from such relevant groups as the College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the American Medical Association (AMA), and even the Texas Hospital Association (THA) all point out several things: it is absurd to hold abortion clinics to the standards of surgical standards because abortion is not a surgical operation, it is misleading to suggest that the new safety standards increase safety for a clinical procedure that’s usually done in less than 10 minutes and results in complications in less than 3 percent of cases, and abortion doctors are unlikely to obtain hospital-admitting privileges since the procedure is almost never done in a hospital.

As I argue, with citations, in my own post on the topic, the real impact of the abortion clinic safety regulations is to eliminate the operability of most abortion clinics in the state. Feel free to check out my post on the topic, and check out Austin Chronicle article mentioned earlier for a description of how HB 2 is affecting clinics already, and check out this Dallas Morning News article for a description of how HB 2 may be dismantled in court.