Due to Texas’ new abortion ban, women in the state must now travel 20 times farther to obtain an abortion as reported in an analysis of anti-abortion measures implemented in some states due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, the average distance a woman will have to travel one-way […]
On Tuesday, March 31, a United States appeals court ruled to allow Texas to continue enforcing limits on people’s ability to obtain safe and legal abortions due to the state’s policy to postpone “non-essential” procedures in lieu of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a New York Times release by Reuters, “Texas and other states that […]
In one of the most high-profile challenges to a government response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of Texas abortion providers have sued Governor Greg Abbott and other state officials in protest of his administration’s exploitation of the pandemic to stop most abortions. The abortion providers, represented by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Center […]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit against seven small Texas cities with local laws banning abortion. The cities call themselves “sanctuary cities for the unborn” and have passed laws that define abortion as murder, allow family members of abortion patients to sue providers for emotional distress, ban emergency contraception and birth […]
Texas will regain federal Medicaid funding for its state family planning program despite refusing to reinstate Planned Parenthood’s coverage, a move which threatens to embolden attacks on Planned Parenthood in other states. Texas lost its Title X federal funding under the Obama administration in 2012 after removing Planned Parenthood and other “affiliates of abortion providers” […]
This week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted a link to an Esquire article titled “An Expert on Concentration Camps Says That’s Exactly What the U.S. Is Running at the Border” which sparked controversy over the Trump administration’s handling of refugees. AOC captioned her tweet “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United […]
Texas lawmakers are considering a bill, called the Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act or House Bill 896, that would ban all abortion in the state as well as charge women who have abortions with homicide, a crime punishable by death penalty in the state of Texas. The bill was granted its first committee hearing […]
Friday, a federal judge in Texas ruled the Affordable Care Act (ACA) unconstitutional. While the law will not be overturned yet and is still in effect, the decision will be appealed and may go before the Supreme Court. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled the ACA unconstitutional after 18 Republican state attorneys general and two […]
Five Prairie View A&M students, with the aid of the NAACP, are suing Waller County, Texas, arguing that the county’s decision not to allow early voting at the HBCU is suppressing the majority black and student populations’ ability to vote. While early voting officially began this past Monday in Texas, early voting at the Prairie […]
On Tuesday, Texas was the first state to hold primary races in preparation for the November 2018 midterm elections. For the first time in 25 years, Democrats are running in all 36 of Texas’s congressional districts.
Whole Women’s Health (WWH), a group of clinics that provide abortion care and other reproductive health services, announced on September 8th that it will offer free abortions to women impacted by Hurricane Harvey in Texas for the entire month of September. They have stated that they will set up four locations in Texas in partnership […]
Last week, a federal judge handed down the decision to temporarily block a anti-abortion law set to take effect in the state of Texas on September 1. The law, SB 8, would have gone into effect on Friday and banned two types of procedures that are usually used in second trimester abortions. The two types […]
United States District Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos handed down a decision to strike down Texas’s revised voter ID law (Senate Bill 5) on the basis that it continues to discriminate against African American and Latino voters. Judge Gonzalez Ramos issued a 27 page decision on the 23rd of August stating that the voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act and is unconstitutional.
The bill bans all private health insurance plans and plans sold through the Affordable Care Act marketplace from covering abortion care unless the life of the woman is directly at risk. Instead, women would be required to buy supplemental insurance should they ever think they may need or want an abortion, prompting some Democratic lawmakers to accuse Republicans of forcing women to buy “rape insurance.”
There is less than nine days left in Texas’s special legislative session and two of the most controversial bills being considered have yet to make it to the Governor’s desk for signature.
The Department of Health and Human Services is currently considering a waiver that would allow Texas to receive federal Medicaid family planning funds despite the state’s refusal to follow federal law by banning providers who offer abortion care, like Planned Parenthood, from receiving federal Medicaid family planning funds. Texas also wants HHS permission to impose […]
On Friday the Texas Supreme Court discarded a lower court’s ruling that spouses of gay and lesbian public employees are entitled to government-subsidized marriage benefits. The court argued that, although Obergefell v. Hodges requires states to license and recognize same-sex marriages, it does not mandate that states “provide the same publicly funded benefits to all married persons.”
Senators voted last week to send anti-abortion bill SB 8 to the desk of Governor Abbott, who is expected to sign it into law soon. The bill itself, an overt attack on women’s physical and psychological health, requires fetal remains to be buried or cremated, prohibits donations of fetal tissue, and implements sweeping bans on certain types of second trimester abortions.
In 2013, the Supreme Court overturned the provision requiring specific states to seek federal approval, freeing Texas to pass whatever election laws it pleased. Voting rights activists have stated that if that provision of the Voting Rights Act was still in place, Texas taxpayers would have been spared the significant legal costs incurred defending these unconstitutional laws.
On Monday, the Justice Department withdrew its Obama era objection to Texas’ draconian voter ID law, claiming that the Department, now under President Trump and Attorney General Sessions, no longer believes the law was passed with discriminatory intent.
