Texas House Passes Measure Restricting Abortion

AUSTIN, Tex. — The Texas House of Representatives on Wednesday passed
a vigorously contested bill restricting access to abortion.
The vote was called shortly after 11 a.m. As the votes were counted,
one spectator in the gallery stood up and shouted, "As a queer woman
of color, I object to these proceedings." Security guards approached
her and others who began to shout as the vote came in: 96 to 49. House
members and supporters in the gallery applauded as officers led some
protesters out and carried others from the chamber.

The bill closely resembles one that the House passed last month, and
which was stalled in the closing minutes of a special session of the
legislature by an 11-hour filibuster by State Senator Wendy Davis, a
Democrat from Fort Worth. But her victory proved temporary: Gov. Rick
Perry called a second special session of the legislature to take up
the abortion bill once again.

The bill, like its predecessor, 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 argue that the heightened requirements will protect women's
health; opponents counter that the restrictions are intended solely as
a burden on the clinics that perform abortions and will require
expenses that will force many of them to close.

The House held a preliminary vote on Tuesday evening and approved the
measure largely along party lines, with 98 for and 49 members against.
Now, with the final House vote, the bill moves to the Texas Senate,
where a committee has already scheduled a hearing for Thursday to
consider the bill and to pass it along to the full Senate for final
approval. That vote could come by the end of the week, though some
members of the Senate have said they expect the vote to take place
early next week.

With the Senate largely inactive until the coming vote, opponents of
the bill took to the road. Senator Davis, whose political profile has
been raised to national recognition by her filibuster, joined Cecile
Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of
America, for a rally in Houston as part of a "Stand With Texas Women"
bus tour that will hit the vast state's major cities through the
weekend.

The fight over the abortion issue has led to an outpouring of
political activism on both sides of the issue that has startled
lawmakers and swelled the presence of Capitol security forces.
Thousands of demonstrators — the bill's supporters wearing blue, and
the opponents, orange — thronged the hallways of the majestic Capitol
building and jammed the House spectator gallery. After the Tuesday
night vote, opponents of the bill chanted "shame on you" at lawmakers.

Upon hearing of the provisional passage of the bill on Tuesday night,
Ms. Richards, the daughter of former Gov. Ann Richards, sent out a
Twitter message that stated, "Tonight the TX House passed a bill that
will take women back decades--and we're not going."

Members of the Republican majority spent part of the morning, as they
had the day before, swatting away proposed amendments to the bill. The
first, from Ruth Jones McClendon, a Democrat from San Antonio, would
have helped pay for adoption aid and health care benefits for families
that want to adopt. A colleague, Eliott Naishtat, a Democrat from
Austin, argued in favor of the amendment, saying, "we can expect
thousands — thousands of babies to be born who would need assistance
from the state." Like more than 20 amendments offered on Tuesday,
however, the amendment and the others down were voted down, largely
along party lines.