Posted on 07/13/2013 2:11:12 AM PDT by lbryce
The Texas Senate gave final passage on Friday to one of the strictest anti-abortion measures in the country, legislation championed by Gov. Rick Perry, who rallied the Republican-controlled Legislature late last month after a Democratic filibuster blocked the bill and intensified already passionate resistance by abortion-rights supporters.
The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and hold abortion clinics to the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers, among other requirements. Its supporters say that the strengthened requirements for the structures and doctors will protect women’s health; opponents argue that the restrictions are actually intended to put financial pressure on the clinics that perform abortions and will force most of them to shut their doors.
Mr. Perry applauded lawmakers for passing the bill, saying “Today the Texas Legislature took its final step in our historic effort to protect life.” Legislators and anti-abortion activists, he said “tirelessly defended our smallest and most vulnerable Texans and future Texans.”
Debate over the bill has ignited fierce exchanges between lawmakers, and tense confrontations between opponents of the bill, who have worn orange, and supporters of the bill wearing blue. Signs and slogans have been everywhere, bearing long, impassioned arguments or the simple scrawl on a young man’s orange shirt, a Twitter-esque “@TXLEGE: U R dumb.”
The bill had come nearly this far before: a version had been brought to the Senate in the previous session of the Legislature, in June, and was killed by State Senator Wendy Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth, with an 11-hour filibuster that stalled the bill until after the deadline for ending the session. The filibuster became an overnight sensation on Twitter and other forms of social media, with more than 180,000 people viewing the filibuster live online
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yeah Perry
That's what Texas had last week for 20+ week old babies. Now they don't.
Look, you seem to think everyone that disagrees with you on this site is fine with only stopping at 20+ weeks. No conservative is, and this legislation will save lives. Legislation introduced that would protect from conception would not pass (yet) and those 20 week-olds would still be aborted, plain and simple.
There's an old saying that perfect is the enemy of the good. This legislation is good enough, until we win more battles and can protect life at conception.
I agree that to go step by step is the best in reality.
One of the most effective tools Pro-lifers used was to offer women who were going to walk into an abortion clinic free sonograms.
Protecting the unborn is a noble goal and while this law doesn’t solve the whole problem, it moves the needle for the whole population. there is no way—in reality—that you are going to repeal Roe V Wade, but you can dismantle it piece by piece.
I support anyone who makes a forward move on pro life. That does not mean I am a “liberal” or not “pro life”. We are in the position of educating a whole generation of what pro-life means and we are moving forward on that becuase more young people are pro-life than a generation ago!
Five seconds after the Gov signs it into law, the Pro-Aborts will be at the court house steps with papers in hand. Abortion and gay marriage will be the triggers for CWW II - SEX is the left’s religion and nothing must stand it their way of all perversion and their culture of death.
I agree that a total ban is needed.
My understanding is that the state legislature wanted to pass a law that would protect as many unborn children as possible and possibly survive in court.
Otherwise the ban would be largely symbolic.
Unless Kennedy has changed his mind again I think that is probably the case.
I’m all ears when it comes to ideas.
Even seceding is a good option to me.
What would you have had the legislature do this time?
I’m not trying to pick a fight. I honestly would like to know.
No abortion is acceptable.
Unless the bill is perfect, you’re just going to sit on your ass.
Guess what, we don’t need you. You have nothing to contribute, so we’re just going to go ahead and do it anyways.
You can either join us or sulk. The fact that you’re trying (and desperately so), to turn a victory into a loss, tells me everything I need to know about you.
Some of us are happy this morning. I, for one am going to celebrate.
Good thing we have folks like Eternal Vigilence to cheer them on. I bet he’ll be giddy if the courts strike it down! :)
excellant post...
“There’s an old saying that perfect is the enemy of the good. This legislation is good enough, until we win more battles and can protect life at conception”
Pls see my post #83.
Good analysis. Using the logic of the purists, it’s no good winning a battle if we don’t win the war in one attempt. They would let all the babies at risk die instead of reaching out and saving some.
“My understanding is that the state legislature wanted to pass a law that would protect as many unborn children as possible and possibly survive in court.”
They swore before God to support the Constitution, not to obey a lawless court.
“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”
“No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
If you’re one of those who has bought into the idea that the U.S. Supreme Court, in Marbury vs. Madison, arrogated to itself the supreme power to decide what the Constitution says and means, and the power to legislate from the bench, and to veto laws, you’ve believed a Big Lie. In fact, you’ve believed the lie that is doing more to destroy our republic and our form of government than any other single thing. John Marshall promulgated a constitional supremacist view, not a judicial supremacist one. And he made it clear that not only must the court obey the Constitution, so must every other officer of government, in every branch. Don’t believe me? Go read it for yourself. They still wrote in plain, non-lawyerly English back then.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0005_0137_ZO.html
“...a law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.”
— Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, majority opinion, Marbury vs. Madison
At least you’re getting there. If this stops the killing of innocent human beings beyond 20 weeks in the womb, that’s a good thing.
Under this legislation, every single baby remains at risk. The "law" gives express "legal" permission to kill every single one of them, in fact.
While sacrificing every principle that argues against abortion, morally, constitutionally, and legally.
Pretty bad deal if you ask me. Give up everything, for nothing.
No. But it is as certain that they will as the sun setting this evening.
One step at a time... Pro aborts did themselves a ton of damage the past two weeks.
I said I wasn’t trying to pick a fight.
I know good and well about the Constitution and I have even litigated it in court as a lawyer.
My point is that (even though it’s wrong) we have to either alter or abolish the system or play within the confines of the rules that exist.
Ignoring the judicial process simply because we don’t consider ourselves bound by erroneous SCOTUS decisions won’t mean anything when the law gets blocked by a federal judge.
I personally would be fine with Texas declaring independence from the US and banning all abortions.
So it’s either abolish or alter the system or play within the rules.
Again, if you were in the TX legislature (just a regular state rep.- not Speaker) what would you do?
That is a serious question.
It is one I have had to ask myself.
On what grounds do you think the courts would strike down this law?
It's a good step in the right direction and I applaud Perry and the Texas GOP for "standing their ground."
That's easy.
I would have offered a bill to strike Texas Penal Code, Title 5, Chapter 19, Sec. 19.06., which was put there ten years ago by Rick Perry and the "pro-life" Republicans, which grants express "legal" permission to murder babies.
Sec. 19.06. APPLICABILITY TO CERTAIN CONDUCT. This chapter does not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is:
(1) conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child;
(2) a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent, if the death of the unborn child was the intended result of the procedure;
(3) a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent as part of an assisted reproduction as defined by Section 160.102, Family Code; or
(4) the dispensation of a drug in accordance with law or administration of a drug prescribed in accordance with law.
Added by Acts 2003, 78th Leg., ch. 822, Sec. 2.02, eff. Sept. 1, 2003.
And, because at the same time they explicitly recognized that the child in the womb is an individual human person, voila, all abortions in Texas would be illegal.
Texas Penal Code, Title 1., Chapter 1., Sec. 1.07.
Sec. 1.07.
(26) "Individual" means a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.
(49) "Death" includes, for an individual who is an unborn child, the failure to be born alive.
All of which would be in perfect keeping, of course, with the laws of nature and nature's God, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, every clause of the stated purposes of the U.S. Constitution, and the explicit, imperative equal protection requirement of the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments.
The same grounds that they have "struck down" the other state laws that are virtually identical to it.
as TEX has 36 Congressional districts, them state Senate districts are mighty big. Everything is big down there.
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