Tx Senate Votes To Deny Women's Rights

Texas Republicans don't support equal rights for women. They don't believe women should have the right to control their own bodies (a right they support for men). They think women's bodies should be controlled by men (such as themselves). And they are going to make sure that happens -- even if they have to do it in a special session and change the legislative rules to do it.

The biennial session of the Texas legislature has ended (it only meets for a few months every two years). The Senate Republicans had tried to pass a series of new restrictions on clinics providing abortion services, but using the Senate rule requiring a 2/3 majority before legislation can be brought to the floor for a vote, Democrats were able to kill those measures.

But after the legislative session ended, Governor Perry called a special session to consider redistricting (since their prior redistricting plan was tossed out by federal courts as being unfair to minorities, and thus unconstitutional). But after the session began, Perry added the issue of eliminating as many abortion providers as possible.

And the Senate quickly jumped on that by passing a bill (SB 5) that would put onerous and unnecessary restrictions on abortion providers (with the aid of the Lt. Governor, who suspended the 2/3 rule so Democrats couldn't block the bill). The new restrictions would close 42 of the 47 clinics in the state -- leaving only five (see map above). The Republicans will try to claim they are just worried about women's safety, but that is just a lie to cover their real purpose. None of these clinics are unsafe.

The real reason is to make it as difficult as possible for women to choose whether to have an abortion or not (thus taking control of their bodies away from them and giving it to the male-dominated legislature). The bill would be especially destructive for women in the Panhandle and West Texas -- making them have to travel 350 to 400 miles to exercise that choice (which would be very difficult for poor women, who may not have easy access to transportation or the ability to take extra time off work to go).

This is just a backdoor attack on women. The Republican-dominated legislature knows it can't outright ban abortion, so they are trying to deny women that right in other ways -- like closing down the clinics. Making matters even worse, this same legislature has substantially cut social services funding. That means that while they want to force women to have babies, they are not willing to help those women care for those babies after they are born. It is a mean-spirited move, born out of a mean-spirited ideology -- and shows that Republicans think women are deserving only of a second-class citizenship (and unworthy of equality with men).