Trump’s GOP Allies in Texas Open Door For Death Penalty For Abortion Patients
Yesterday, HuffPost highlighted the newest extreme Republican attacks on reproductive freedoms. This time, Donald Trump’s Republican allies in Texas endorsed an agenda that defines abortion care as homicide, opening the door to the death penalty for women and providers, and criminalizing standard in vitro fertilization practice.
This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party. This deranged, dangerous, and draconian agenda is possible because of Donald Trump. There’s only one way to stop these attacks on reproductive freedoms, and that’s by reelecting Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Democrats down the ballot in November.
Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson Sarafina Chitika released the following statement:
“Donald Trump has repeatedly said he supports extreme MAGA state laws that monitor women’s pregnancies and control their health care decisions – now the Texas GOP, which endorsed Donald Trump, has opened the door for the death penalty for abortion patients as part of its official 2024 platform. Let’s be clear: their cruel agenda wouldn’t be possible without Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade. And like every extreme ban across the country ripping away women’s freedom, Donald Trump owns this.”
Read the story below:
HuffPost: Texas GOP Appears To Put Death Penalty For Abortion Patients On 2024 Wish List by Alanna Vagianos, 5/29/24
The Republican Party of Texas is considering a platform that appears to endorse the death penalty for abortion providers and patients.
Texas delegates voted on a 2024 platform at the state’s GOP Convention on Saturday and aim to tally the votes by Wednesday to finalize their platform for the coming year. The proposal called for new legislation to solidify fetal personhood ideology into law, define abortion care as homicide and criminalize in vitro fertilization, first reported by feminist writer Jessica Valenti. […]
The platform is seen as more of a wish list than a binding document, but it’s a critical reflection of how far right the Texas Republican Party has moved in recent years.
The GOP platform calls for an “equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization,” and later states that “abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide.” The phrase “equal protection of the law” is used in the anti-choice movement to define abortion as homicide, and criminalizes abortion physicians and patients as murderers. […]
Texas lawmakers have also proposed legislation — often referred to as “abolish abortion bills” — to erase a distinction between abortion and homicide. […]
Even within the anti-choice movement, prosecuting an abortion patient is a fringe belief. Most anti-abortion laws include carve-outs to ensure that a woman is not criminalized for her pregnancy outcome (although many have been arrested, despite these laws).
“For a long time, I think [abortion opponents] understood ― from their own polling and certainly the messaging we saw them use ― that there was a limit to how far they could go because voters in Texas appeared to be willing to only go so far alongside them,” said Wendy Davis, senior adviser to Planned Parenthood Texas Votes and a former state senator.
“One of those bright lines that they appeared to believe they shouldn’t cross was a line that would hold a pregnant person criminally or civilly liable for seeking to terminate her pregnancy,” Davis said. “That line is dangerously evaporating, and it’s evaporating purposefully because the fringe element that is more and more becoming reflective of the Republican Party writ large in Texas is having a greater and greater influence.”
The party platform also supports “the adoption of human embryos” as well as “the banning of human embryo trafficking.” This is an obvious attack on in vitro fertilization (IVF), which Davis pointed out is likely the next step for the anti-abortion movement in Texas. If adopted, this could threaten IVF patients who chose to transfer their embryos out of state, fearing what happened in Alabama would happen next in Texas.
“It’s also possible that people who refer patients traveling for abortion could be considered as ‘trafficking embryos,’” Davis added. “That raises some really major concerns as well.”
The platform also addressed two major abortion issues that are in front of the Supreme Court this session: the use of abortion pills and life-saving abortion care in emergency medical situations. The document endorsed banning the “manufacturing, importation, sale, dispensing and use of abortifacients,” which Texas currently does. It also states that they support Texas’ current medical emergency exception within the state’s near-total abortion ban, adding that although the exception language should not be altered, “implementation does need to be addressed” — likely referring to the dozens of women in Texas who have nearly died because they were refused lifesaving abortion care.
