It's impossible for me to be an education blogger here in Texas and to not post on Senate Bill 8, the state’s anti-abortion law.

My women friends from throughout the country call me in disbelief, wondering how in the heck we got to this place in Texas. It's agonizing and horrific the cruelty we see masquerading as deliberative policy when it's not. Shame on the U.S. Supreme Court for their silence on this issue when they had a chance to do something. Shame on our governor and on Texas legislators for being complicit in this attack on women.

I am glad to see that Attorney General Merrick Garland with the U.S. Department of Justice will explore all options to challenge Texas' SB 8. This op-ed by Sharon Grigsby sheds excellent light on just how extreme our state's republican party is.  Key quotes:

This law isn’t about protecting either vulnerable women or unborn babies. It’s about protecting politicians who are scared of getting out-righted in the next primary.

In pursuit of staying in power, Republican leaders have deputized Texans to do their dirty work — and shield them from complicity. 

What troubles me most about the ruling party of Texas — and the voters who keep them in power — is their adherence to being pro-birth but not so much pro-life.

Several of us in the community met this evening. Everyone's pretty stressed with the extremism that's taken ahold of our state. Our work and advocacy are not for the faint in heart. 

-Angela Valenzuela

My early-pregnancy miscarriages changed my views on abortion. But then came Texas’ SB 8

Trying to outlaw abortion at six weeks by asking citizens to spy on their neighbors is just a bridge too far.

Thousands of protesters gathered outside the Texas Capitol in Austin in May to show their concern about restrictive abortion legislation that was headed to Gov. Greg Abbott's office. The law, which bans almost all abortions in the state, went into effect Sept. 1.(Sergio Flores / TNS)

By Sharon Grigsby 12:06 PM on Sep 7, 2021

In six pregnancies, in my late 20s and early 30s, I lay on the OB-GYN’s examining table as his ultrasound machine looked for cardiac activity in my womb.

Each time, the first-trimester images showed the beginning of a new life growing inside me.

As much as I wanted to dance with delight, I mostly felt fear over what the next doctor’s appointment might reveal.

Complications developed in four of my pregnancies and follow-up sonograms showed a picture that even my untrained eye couldn’t mistake:

The embryo’s development had stopped. The cardiac activity had ceased.

Each of those losses left me wanting to die.Today I am the lucky mother of two sons, the first one born after three miscarriages and the second born after a fourth.

But my grief over those tiny creatures that didn’t make it out of the first trimester left me knowing that — despite wanting only two children — I would have a hard time choosing abortion if I ever became pregnant again.

After a lifetime of being ardently pro-choice and considering abortion as a comforting safety valve — albeit a decision that I somehow escaped having to confront — I was a lot less sure of what I believed.

So it was with a lot of conflicting emotions that I came to the Texas Legislature’s attempt to end abortion. I suspect a lot of you feel the same, even as you avoid speaking up in the din of voices who are Just So Sure.

A sign at the Whole Woman’s Health Clinic in Fort Worth last Wednesday, the day that Senate Bill 8 went into effect in Texas.(Elias Valverde II / Staff Photographer)

For a variety of reasons — as frequently social and political as religious — abortion is far more polarizing today than it was even at the time Roe was enacted.

I honestly think there is little room for persuasion given the deeply emotional associations now in play.

For anti-abortion forces, this issue is about children — helpless babies, just like their own babies or the children they love.

For the choice side, it represents the fragile autonomy women have fought so long to achieve from the edict that, because of biology, we are not entitled to the same rights and privacy as men.

Bottom line: The issue is about two different things with two different constituencies and two battle cries — “women’s body, women’s choice” and “it’s a baby, don’t kill it.”

That’s the reflexively righteous society we live in, one without room for nuance. No one has the patience to ask questions. No one reads something to have his or her mind changed.

There are as many opinions about the central question of abortion — at what point does life begin — as there are variables in every pregnancy. No issue is more in need of thoughtful discussion — not least of all because it involves a one-of-a-kind situation, a body housing what will eventually become another body.

Instead, we have Texas lawmakers and leaders throwing gas on the fire and building a flaming pile of damaging precedents that are going to backfire on all of us.

I believe a mother’s rights decrease with a baby’s development, but outlawing abortion at six weeks — and no exceptions for rape or incest — moves the line way too far back. It leaves women having to decide something they don’t even know they need to decide.

It’s also a legal trick that evades judicial review by design, a tactic that even for those of us inhabiting that squishy middle is clearly wrong.

Women in Texas have been battling the erosion of abortion rights for almost two decades. This 2015 rally by students and abortion rights activists on the steps of the Texas Capitol in Austin protested previous restrictions put in place by the state Legislature.(Eric Gay / AP)

This law isn’t about protecting either vulnerable women or unborn babies. It’s about protecting politicians who are scared of getting out-righted in the next primary.

In pursuit of staying in power, Republican leaders have deputized Texans to do their dirty work — and shield them from complicity.

By encouraging busybodies to go after people who “aid and abet” abortions, those in charge threaten to turn Texas into a modern-day East Germany, where the Stasi bribed citizens to inform on their neighbors.

A day is coming when Roe v. Wade will be argued out in the huge and very public forum that the Supreme Court allows.

What Texas has done in the meantime — scaring people into compliance with its legal trickery and spies-and-snitches mechanism — is an ill-advised detour.

It also has pushed me — and who knows how many others — out of the murky middle in this consequential debate. All of us, no matter our views on abortion, need to think hard about the means to which we are willing to resort to achieve an end.

What troubles me most about the ruling party of Texas — and the voters who keep them in power — is their adherence to being pro-birth but not so much pro-life.

The most recent national Kids Count report, from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, ranked Texas as the fifth-worst state in the nation for children.

Our state has consistently ranked in the bottom half of the U.S. for the past decade in nearly every indicator for children’s well-being, including health coverage, foster care, education and economic equity.

What about the safety net for all the women now forced to carry their babies to full term and the most vulnerable of all — unwanted children?

For now, doctors are left unsure about their relationships with patients — what can they safely say when discussing options and how can they know they aren’t talking to a wanna-be bounty hunter hoping to claim a $10,000 “reward”?

What’s the risk for the friend from whom a pregnant woman sought advice? The school counselor, the religious leader, the Uber driver, even the phone company that provided the line used to set up an appointment?

A billboard put up in 2018 by the Dallas-based Afiya Center proclaimed "abortion is self-care" and included the hashtag #TrustBlackWomen. This billboard was in response to another one, from the Black Pro Life Coalition, that proclaimed "abortion is not healthcare."(Irwin Thompson / Staff Photographer)

For women facing complicated pregnancies or tests that show their child can’t survive outside the womb, this new law makes a difficult situation untenable.

What of the hospital committees that have traditionally supported a mother’s wishes and approved medical terminations after ultrasounds reveal complications certain to end in a stillbirth or death hours after a baby is delivered?

Wrestling with an abortion is a terrible lot with all sorts of circumstances that make each decision different.

For people like me, who believed that some of the restrictions placed on abortion in the past two decades were reasonable, Senate Bill 8 is a call to action. It’s a reminder that my own internal conflict — which results in not taking a stand — is complicit in allowing these laws to take effect.

We have to trust each individual woman to make the decision that’s best for her. Not the government and not random individuals, especially vigilantes.

Abortion is totally a more complex issue than ever portrayed—which is why a blunt, one-size-fits all policy is harmful, risking the lives, in particular, of low-income women.

For low-income women and women of color, the prognosis is more grim. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that black women are 3-4 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. And Texas now has the highest maternal mortality rate in the "developed" world, according to a report in the journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

 I agree that pro-life should include women, too, since the right to be one is unequally distributed.


Angela

Fulbright: Pro-life should include protecting the lives of women

By Amelia K. Fulbright

Updated 10:54 pm, Wednesday, November 8, 2017

• 

Photo: Fry Design Ltd

A pro-life law endangers women.

 

The pro-life movement is clear about when the life of a fetus begins, but what seems to lurk beneath the surface is a notion that pregnant women are no longer fully human or fully free. Pro-life advocates insist that once a woman conceives, regardless of the circumstances, she must choose motherhood - over her physical and emotional wellbeing, over her vocation, even if it means living in poverty. Even if it kills her.

During this year's legislative session, the Texas Legislature passed a law banning the most common and very safe abortion procedure used during the second trimester known as "dilation and evacuation." Only 11 percent of abortions occur after the first trimester. But since they are more likely to be situations where the mother's life is threatened, this ban directly endangers women who may already be at risk. The law is under appeal this week in a federal courtroom in Austin.
Being a white, educated, middle-class woman has shielded me as devastating anti-abortion laws have shut down women's health clinics across the state. Today, 95 percent of the state's counties do not have an abortion provider. But this newest law may directly affect me: My husband and I are considering having a second child, but at nearly 40, I am at a risky "advanced maternal age." Heaven forbid I encounter complications because pro-life politicians might prefer I die than terminate a pregnancy.
For low-income women and women of color, the prognosis is more grim. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that black women are 3-4 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. And Texas now has the highest maternal mortality rate in the "developed" world, according to a report in the journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
These latest developments in Texas have reinforced the astonishing barriers American women face in determining their own reproductive freedom. Since the start of 2017, state legislatures across the country have already passed more than 50 abortion restrictions, including waiting periods and mandatory counseling designed to dissuade women from having an abortion. West Virginia and Mississippi have already banned the dilation and evacuation procedure, and similar bans are pending in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas and Alabama against heavy legal opposition.
As a former Southern Baptist, I know firsthand what it means to be devoutly pro-life, but experience has taught me that abortion is a much more complex issue than often portrayed. The basic limitation of the self-described pro-life movement is that it attempts to confront the moral complexity of real life with a rigidly simple set of commandments. I can sympathize with this approach; it is a survival instinct. But it threatens our capacity to experience the abundant life that Jesus promised by holding women's lives captive to the dictates of public officials. Parenthood inevitably involves sacrifices.

But isn't there a qualitative difference between sacrifices freely made and those legislated for us? Do we really expect women to sacrifice their lives to bear children? When does a mother's right to life begin? When does her personhood start?
I am not trying to persuade anyone to terminate a pregnancy. I am saying that women's lives matter to God and to their families, and they ought to matter to politicians. So long as we only define life as the protection of a fetus, we have dangerously oversimplified the issue. Only when we can affirm that a mother's life need not end for a child's life to begin, only then can we truly call ourselves pro-life.

Fulbright is founder and director of Labyrinth Progressive Student Ministry at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the advisory board for Just Texas: Faith Voices for Reproductive Justice.

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