popular accounts

Carter Snead, in a recent senate testimony:

Popular accounts of women in Texas being denied life-saving medical care are similarly lacking. Texas abortion law allows exceptions to protect a mother’s life or prevent her substantial bodily impairment. But many of these cases involved women seeking abortions because their unborn child was the one to receive a heartbreaking diagnosis of disability or terminal illness. Texas does not authorize abortions solely because of an unborn baby’s disability or poor prognosis.

Regarding risks to mothers, Texas just passed a bipartisan law stating that previable premature rupture of membranes and reaffirming that ectopic pregnancies fall under the health exception. The same goes for miscarriage management. The Texas Supreme Court just clarified that serious health risks need not be imminent to justify abortion. And the “reasonable medical judgment” standard for clinicians invoking such exceptions has been in place without issue since the passage of Texas’ 20-week abortion ban in 2013. Since then, there have been 238 abortions performed at 20 weeks or later with zero prosecutions.