Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called a special session of the Texas Legislature to include consideration of “protecting unborn children and their mothers from the harm of abortion.”

Answering the call, Texas State Rep. Brent Money has filed House Bill 163, which would ensure that the civil and criminal laws protecting human life in Texas equally protect preborn children.

Some Republican lawmakers are also filing legislation similar to Senate Bill 2880, known as the Women and Child Protection Act, or the WCPA, a bill previously considered during the regular session but which failed to pass.

Abolish Abortion Texas urges Texans to put their support behind House Bill 163 and not to divert time and energy away from equal protection by supporting other legislation such as the WCPA, which denies equal protection, merely regulates the circumstances of abortion, would have little to no deterrent effect on the commission of prenatal homicide in Texas, and would mislead anti-abortion Texans to believe we had addressed the issue of self-induced abortion in our state.

I. The WCPA Fails to Address the Real Issues

As discussed more thoroughly in this analysis from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, the WCPA fails to adequately address the self-induced abortion epidemic and would be ineffective, practically unenforceable, and ultimately unjust, protecting neither women nor children.

Here is a quick summary why:

1. Texas law already bans the provision of abortion-inducing drugs.
2. Texas law already establishes multiple avenues of civil liability against providers of abortion-inducing drugs.
3. While the WCPA would add to existing avenues of civil liability, it would not guarantee enforceability.
4. Even if federal courts allowed enforcement, it would not materially reduce the flow of abortion-inducing drugs into Texas due to proven international sources.
5. The WCPA also denies equal protection, leaves pregnant women exposed to coercion, and cuts off the most effective and enforceable means of addressing the crisis of prenatal homicide in the state.

The Foundation to Abolish Abortion depicts the problems with the WCPA in a shocking illustration:

As the Foundation to Abolish Abortion points out, the WCPA notably exempts even from civil liability the “conduct of a pregnant woman who aborts or seeks to abort the woman’s unborn child.” 

The WCPA, as with current abortion law in Texas, therefore ensures that women retain complete legal protection to willfully commit the murder of their own preborn babies.

The WCPA also fails to address the issue of male partners and others potentially pressuring women into having abortions. Because taking abortion-inducing drugs would remain legal for women under the WCPA, the conduct of pressuring women into abortion would likewise remain legal, since pressuring someone toward legal conduct is generally not a criminal offense.

Ultimately, the WCPA does not address the real issues. In fact, it doubles down on giving legal immunity to women who perform self-induced abortions.

II. House Bill 163 Would Make Murdering Anyone Illegal for Everyone

As House Bill 163 says, the purposes of the bill are to:

1. “Protect the lives of preborn children with the same criminal and civil laws protecting the lives of human beings born alive by repealing laws that permit wilful prenatal homicide and assault.”
2. “Repeal laws that could be interpreted as allowing a person to pressure a pregnant mother to obtain an abortion.”
3. “Secure the right to life and equal protection of the laws for all preborn children from the moment of fertilization and to protect pregnant mothers.”

While the WCPA would single out women who abort their children for special legal immunity, House Bill 163 would instead repeal discriminatory provisions that single out one class of people to give them special immunity and another class of people to deny them legal protection.

House Bill 163 would simply protect the lives of preborn people with the exact same laws already protecting born people, establishing true equal protection of the laws.

A. House Bill 163 follows the principles and platform of the Republican Party of Texas.

The principles and platform of the Republican Party of Texas explicitly call for the exact approach to abortion that would be accomplished by House Bill 163.

As the principles of the Republican Party of Texas affirm, “We believe in…The sanctity of innocent human life, created in the image of God, which should be equally protected from fertilization to natural death.”

In Platform Plank 23, grassroots Texas Republicans “urge lawmakers to enact legislation to abolish abortion by immediately securing the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization, because abortion violates the United States Constitution by denying such persons the equal protection of the law.”

This is essentially repeated in Platform Plank 195, which urges the Texas Legislature to “oppose legislation that discriminates against any preborn children and violates the United States Constitution by denying such persons equal protection of the laws.”

House Bill 163 is the only legislation proposed in the special session that fulfills these principles and planks. At the same time, the WCPA is legislation that treats preborn babies as less than human by explicitly denying them equal protection, an express violation of the platform.

B. House Bill 163 would address the issue of abortion demand.

As with guns, pills do not kill people; people kill people.

Texas can pass all the legislation we want, but there simply is no practical way for Texas to stop abortion pills and other methods of killing a preborn baby from getting into the state, especially from international sources.

With that reality in mind, how do we legally restrain people from committing prenatal murder? The same way we legally restrain them from committing any other murder: by making it illegal for anyone to murder a baby.

Texas Penal Code § 19.06 currently says the law against criminal homicide “does not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child.”

Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code § 71.003(c) likewise says the law allowing civil lawsuits for wrongful death “does not apply to a claim for the death of an individual who is an unborn child that is brought against the mother of the unborn child.”

These laws grant all women in Texas complete civil and criminal immunity to murder their own child as long as they do it before the baby is born.

House Bill 163 would repeal these provisions so that murdering preborn children would be illegal for everyone.

This would address the lack of enforceability with current Texas abortion law and with the WCPA, as women who abort in Texas would be subject to the jurisdiction of state law, unlike abortion providers protected by shield laws or entirely outside the jurisdiction of the United States.

Furthermore, as Rep. Money said in his press release, “sex-traffickers, pimps, and other abusers are still legally able to pressure women into abortion.” By criminalizing the act of prenatal murder, House Bill 163 alone “protects vulnerable women by making our law clear so we can prosecute those who try to pressure them to abort their babies.” Most of those who are pressuring women in Texas are also within the jurisdiction of Texas.

C. House Bill 163 would expand both civil and criminal liability for abortion.

Rather than merely creating new mechanisms for using civil liability claims to deter the provision of abortion-inducing drugs, House Bill 163 treats offenses against preborn people the same as offenses against born people. This is accomplished by applying the same laws against murder and wrongful death in Texas to protect all persons made in the image of God, whether or not they have already been born.

Because preborn babies would receive equal protection of the laws under House Bill 163, every existing criminal and civil deterrent already in Texas law could be deployed to protect their lives.

By simply treating preborn babies as the persons they already are, and removing exemptions of the law that treat them otherwise, their lives are legally protected in the exact same way as persons who have already been born.

Conclusion

Beyond failing to address the enforceability issues preventing current civil lawsuits from protecting preborn babies, the WCPA continues to deny the equal protection of the laws to preborn children by providing legal immunity to one group of people for their murder, and by failing to fully protect them in civil and criminal law.

House Bill 163 would instead equally protect preborn people under existing homicide and wrongful death laws, making clear that murdering anyone is illegal for everyone in Texas.

Such an approach affirms the mandate of the Republican Party of Texas, most effectively deals with the issue of abortion demand emerging from within our state, and protects preborn children under both criminal and civil law in a way that no other legislation filed during the Texas special session even attempts to accomplish.

Abolish Abortion Texas therefore urges Christians in our state to rally exclusively behind House Bill 163, calling on our lawmakers to abolish abortion and establish equal protection of the laws for preborn children made in the image of God.