WASHINGTON – The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) strongly opposes Senate Bill 1 (formerly Senate Bill 5 in the previous session) and House Bill 2 under consideration in the Texas legislature. Both bills are plainly intended to restrict the reproductive rights of women in Texas through a series of requirements that improperly regulate medical practice and interfere with the patient-physician relationship.
“The Texas bills set a dangerous precedent of a legislature telling doctors how to practice medicine and how to care for individual patients. ACOG opposes legislative interference, and strongly believes that decisions about medical care must be based on scientific evidence and made by licensed medical professionals, not the state or federal government,” said ACOG Executive Vice President Hal C. Lawrence, III, MD.
“The Texas bills are a compilation of over-reaching measures to control when, where, and how a woman has an abortion,” said ACOG Texas District Chair Lisa M. Hollier, MD, MPH. “The bills are not based on sound science, despite our efforts to provide the legislature with the best available medical knowledge. The bills would erode women’s health by denying the women of Texas the benefits of well-researched, safe, and proven protocols.”
The bills would ban abortion after 20 weeks and impose other widespread restrictions that would close many of the state’s abortion clinics, decrease the number of doctors who meet the additional requirements for providing outpatient abortions, and decrease access to essential women’s health care. For example, the bills would require physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles, allowing abortions only in surgical clinics and setting a higher standard than for other procedures with similar low risk such as colonoscopy. The fact is that abortion is one of the safest medical procedures. The risk of complications from abortion is minimal, with less than 0.5% of abortions involving major complications.
All women, including the women of Texas, must have the legal right to abortion, unconstrained by harassment, unavailability of care, procedure bans, or other legislative or regulatory barriers, including those posed by these Texas bills.
Women should have access to all needed health care—ranging from mammograms to prenatal visits to reproductive care—that is based on scientific facts, not political ideology. ACOG therefore opposes Texas Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 2, which jeopardize women’s health care as well as interfere with medical practice and the patient-physician relationship.
 strongly opposes Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 2 under consideration in the Texas legislature.){kind=link}
If this new abortion bill is made into law, “clean” abortions will be much harder to get. However, abortions will not go away. When people need abortions, they will be performed by those who are not qualified to perform them. I remember a time when illegal abortions were performed by illegal clinics and desperate women themselves. Horrible stories about aborted fetuses being discovered in trash cans or toilets could be found in local newspapers….Have the Republicans forgotten those times??? or do they just not care???…
How can abortion be a safe medical procedure when it always results in the death of a human being? You state that medical care must be based on scientific evidence, yet when it comes to abortion you appear to disregard everything science tells us about developing humans in utero. Don’t close your mind to what well documented, universally recognized scientific fact says about the beginning of human life. Once you have realized the established facts of human embryogenesis and early intrauterine development, then you must ask yourself if you will honor or abandon our civilizational and national commitment to the equal worth and dignity of all human beings — even the smallest, youngest, weakest, and most vulnerable among us.
Please consider this fact when thinking about TX Senate behavior.
DALLAS FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE HAS SCHEDULED A RALLY TO URGE TEXAS LAWMAKERS TO PROTECT WOMEN’S RIGHTS.
Dallas is standing with Texas women Monday night at a gathering in front of Dallas City Hall at 7:00 pm CST to rally in response to the Texas proposed HB 2, an omnibus bill that restricts abortion access in Texas, that passed Friday, July 12, despite the thousands protesting in the rotunda of the capitol.
Who: This event is being organized by members of Dallas for Reproductive Justice and Texas Unified for Change.
What: National Day of Action to Defend Abortion Rights A community response to demand reproductive justice for all Texas residents and demand that Texas lawmakers protect our access to reproductive rights and healthcare. The rally is a public outcry to voice opposition to the legislation, which would close all but five Texas clinics. None of the five clinics that would remain open are located outside of metropolitan areas or west of I-35.
Where: Dallas City Hall – 1500 Marilla St., Dallas, TX 75201
When: 7:00 pm CST Monday July 15, 2013
Why: This is a historic moment in the fight for reproductive rights in Texas and across the nation. Rallies across Texas will show that support for abortion rights and access are vital to the health of every community in the state, and that we refuse to let our rights and healthcare be taken away by lawmakers who have demonstrated time and again that they simply do not care about Texans who are poor, rural, nonwhite, or female, or identify as part of any other group that cannot help them win primary votes. The gathering at City Hall in Dallas will be an opportunity for the North Texas community to express publicly that we reject the proposed legislation, which may well be law by Monday.
House Bill 2 harms millions of women, children, and families by forcing clinics to close as a result of completely unnecessary new regulations, and by disseminating false, misleading, and scientifically unsupported information about abortion. The bill was heroically filibustered by Senator Wendy Davis, with help from other Democratic Senators and the vocal outrage of many constituents, during the first special session of the 83rd legislature, but Governor Rick Perry immediately called a second special session to force the bill through. We must tell our government to LISTEN to us again. Thousands have marched in Austin and rallied across Texas to oppose the bill, but all 22 proposed amendments to the bill were rejected. We REFUSE to let Texas lawmakers control our bodies and we REFUSE to let them make decisions about our health for us.
The Dallas gathering is part of a larger movement that includes the Stand with Texas Women coalition and the National Day of Action to Defend Abortion Rights. Gatherings will take place across Texas, in Austin, Houston, and Dallas, in addition to other cities. For more information on the Dallas event, visit:https://m.facebook.com/events/484683924943211/?ref=m_notif&refid=18¬if_t=group_activity
For more information on the events occurring across the nation, visit:
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/government-and-you/state-governments/state-profiles/texas.html
https://m.facebook.com/#!/events/360018927457923?aref=3&ref=m_notif¬if_t=group_activity&__user=100002121554556
For more information or to schedule an interview, contact dallas4rj@gmail.com