AUSTIN (LifeSiteNews) — Almost 100 pro-life lawmakers, groups, and activists are calling on Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session of the Texas legislature to pass legislation to crack down on abortion pills that are undermining the state’s strong pro-life laws.
The vast majority of abortions are illegal in Texas, but the state is still dealing with the problem of out-of-state actors using pills to circumvent Texas law, facilitating abortions that take place completely in private. In May, the Texas Senate passed SB 2880, the Woman and Child Protection Act, which would make it broadly illegal to “manufacture, possess, or distribute an abortion-inducing drug in this state,” as well as to help facilitate their acquisition. But the Texas House did not take up the bill before the legislative session ended on June 2.
On June 22, Abbott called a special session starting July 16 to handle business lawmakers had not gotten to before the deadline, but SB 2880 was not specified. A June 24 letter led by Texas Right to Life calls for a special session for the purpose of passing the pro-life law, because of the need for “better tools to fight this growing evil.”
“Approximately 19,000 abortion pills are mailed into Texas each year,” the letter says, and they “pose a grave threat—not only because they are marketed directly to vulnerable women (often online and without medical oversight), but also because of their high complication rate and the difficulty in prosecuting the out-of-state actors who peddle them into Texas.”
“Regardless of the circumstance, abortion pills are not safe,” it adds. “A recent study by the Ethics and Public Policy Center found that these abortion drugs are 22 times more dangerous than FDA reports suggest, with 1 in 10 women experiencing serious medical complications.”
Earlier this year, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York abortionist for mailing abortion-inducing drugs into the state, securing an order that imposed a $100,000 fine.
Twelve states currently ban all or most abortions. But the abortion lobby is working feverishly to cancel out those deterrents with a variety of tactics, especially the unregulated, no-oversight distribution of contraceptive and abortion pills across state lines, regardless of the risks to the women they claim to be serving.
In November 2022, Operation Rescue reported that a net decrease of 36 abortion facilities in 2022 led to the lowest number in almost 50 years, yet the chemical abortion business “surged” with 64 percent of new facilities built last year specializing in dispensing mifepristone and misoprostol. Citing data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, STAT says mifepristone “accounts for roughly half of all abortions in the U.S.”
This is despite the fact that a 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.” A recent Charlotte Lozier Institute study also found that most emergency room visits stemming from abortion pill complications are misattributed to miscarriages, further making the pills appear safer than they really are.
“A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” writes Catholic University of America research associate Michael New. “They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency-room visits increased over 500 percent from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”
Whether the issue will be resolved nationally remains to be seen. President Donald Trump has taken a number of pro-life actions since returning to office, but said on the campaign trail that he would not enforce federal law prohibiting abortion pills from being dispensed by mail. Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has since promised a “complete review” of the medical risks of abortion pills.
