This week, the Texas legislature is rushing to vote on several dangerous anti-abortion bills including SB 31/HB 44, a bill that if passed, will increase the ability of Texas to criminally prosecute abortion funds, people who help people get abortion care, and maybe even patients themselves. Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi, Board Chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health and ob/gyn in Texas responds:
“The Texas legislature is reviving a century old and out of use criminal abortion ban to target, surveil, and criminalize people who have been living through the harmful ripple effect of their cruelly designed abortion bans for years. What is unique is that this bill is that it is being presented as a fix to our current abortion access crisis, but it will actually only instead cause more harm.
What is unique is that this bill is that it is being presented as a fix to our current abortion access crisis, but it will actually only instead cause more harm.
“As a physician, I know that if the law changes, it does not change people’s health care needs. Texans who need abortions, just like everyone who needs abortions, do whatever they can to gain access to the timely health care they need, even if they need to leave the state to get it.
“Our communities need all the support we can get. But instead of focusing on expanding access to care, to resources, and to funding to provide Texans with the health care they need, the Texas legislature is introducing a bill they claim to be helping us, when it instead would allow the state to prosecute abortion funds, helpers, and potentially even patients.
“As someone who has been targeted time and time again by Texas policymakers set on silencing and immobilizing any person, organization, or resource that is committed to helping people get the lifesaving abortion and miscarriage care they need, I know firsthand that this has been the goal of anti-abortion Texas legislators the entire time. They were never going to stop at making care inaccessible. They will work tirelessly to ensure that people are living under a fear-based regime to scare people out of making the decisions they know are right for their bodies, families, and futures.
We have to stop this now. I call on my fellow Texans to contact their legislators to oppose this bill and protect our neighbors from getting targeted by this dangerous piece of legislation.
“I am enraged that Texas is trying to further attack our community, but I am also motivated to speak out. We know that what happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas; the bills our legislature introduces are often used as templates for legislation across the country. We have to stop this now. I call on my fellow Texans to contact their legislators to oppose this bill and protect our neighbors from getting targeted by this dangerous piece of legislation.”