Your Move, Texas

A Post Roe World is inevitable, and no one knows it better than abortion advocates. They are fervently working to build firewalls in abortion friendly states around the country, New York and Virginia being neither the first, nor the most extreme.

Nine states have laws on the book protecting mostly unfettered abortion in the event Roe falls: two allow for abortion throughout all nine months (NY and OR), eight protect abortion through viability (WA, MD, ME, HI, DE, CT and CA). New Mexico is working to pass legislation that will protect abortion throughout all nine months, Rhode Island is moving to protect abortion and Vermont wants to go further than New York or Virginia’s legislation, enshrining abortion as a right, with no pretense of viability concerns or limits in the third trimester. Criminalization of various abortion extremes are being erased in state after state, even criminal penalties protecting babies born alive after abortion.

What are pro-life states doing to prepare for the fall of Roe v. Wade? State after state is sending legislation up the pipeline to the Supreme Court with the intent of chipping away at Roe, but only a handful of states have moved to protect life or limit abortion in the event Roe falls. Texas needs to lead!

In Texas, we are working on a firewall to protect life when Roe falls—a Trigger Ban. A Trigger Ban is a ban on abortion that would be triggered into effect when Roe crumbles or falls. Think of the Trigger Ban as the ultimate anti-New York law.

This proposed legislation would trigger new restrictions as the Supreme Court allows, without having to fight for new legislation in a special session. And even though Texas has never repealed its original abortion ban (dating back to 1854), a federal judge previously wrote that our law had been repealed by implication, simply because we have been regulating abortion. The Trigger Ban would clarify the matter definitively.

Big Abortion is fervently preparing for the fall of Roe. It is time pro-lifers prepared, and time Texas joined Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota with a smart, strategic firewall of our own – a real abortion ban – one that can actually be implemented: a Trigger Ban.

Note: Texans for Life Committee, Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops & Texas Alliance for Life have designated the Trigger Ban a top priority for the 86th Legislature which convened earlier this month. Do you know where your State Representative and State Senator stand on the issue? Now is the time to ask!