Anti-Abortion Bill Halted In Lege: Are Republicans Anti-Life?
Vince Leibowitz | Apr 25, 2007 | Comments 1
Finally, some good news out of the session:
A stiff anti-abortion bill is probably gone for the legislative session, dragged down partly by a budget analysis that showed outlawing all abortions would cost the state more than $400 million in health care costs over the next three years.The bill by Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, would trigger an abortion ban if the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn Roe vs. Wade. Under such circumstances, the measure calls for making abortion in all instances – except to prevent the death of the mother – a felony in Texas.
“It got hung on a bad vote in committee,” said Mr. Chisum, adding that the fiscal analysis attached to it didn’t help.
Oh, Mr. Chisum…let’s not be blase here. Could it be perhaps that the bill was also hung up because perhaps some in the Legislature are simply tired of voting for bad public policy time and time and time again?
At any rate, Chisum claims the bill analysis is bunk:
The cost from ending abortions in Texas would come from an estimated 63,000 more births, of which 67 percent are likely to be supported by Medicaid, according to projections from the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board.
Based on current abortion rates of about 78,000 a year, the board estimated that if abortion were illegal, 20 percent of women would go to a state where the procedure was legal. The remainder, based on projections, would carry their pregnancy to term and require medical and social support.
Mr. Chisum, chairman of the powerful budget-writing House Appropriations Committee, said he had budget board representatives explain their logic to him.
“There’s no basis to it. It’s just like saying if more people move into the state, then it costs more money for the state to operate. The bottom line is that that’s the way economic growth works,” he said.
This does bring up another important point about how Republicans are truly not only anti-choice but also anti-life when it comes to “right to life” versus “fiscal conservatism.”
Playing Devil’s Advocate, if these R’s were truly so gung-ho on right to life, perhaps they’d find a way to fund those new births.
Of course, considering they don’t want to even fully fund CHIP for kids already living and breathing, I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that they’d balk at costs for more kids on social services.
Of course, I fully support abortion being a safe and legal procedure. I simply find it amusing that the same Republicans who run around bitching about abortion and killing babies piss themselves over a $400 million fiscal note.
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Filed Under: 80th Legislature
The bill anaysis failed to take into account the human cost paid by women who could neither continue their pregnancies nor afford to travel out of state, but who would seek unsafe aboriton or attempt to self-abort. Our so-called “pro-life” lawmakers all strive mightily to ignore the plain fact that everywhere in the world where abortion is a crime, women die — at a current rate of almost 70,000 each year.
Today’s same edition of the DMN reports that the current death toll from unsafe aborition in Mexico City alone is 1,500 women a year — women who, in the words of Warren Chisum, “try things on their own.”
Maybe it’s because complications of illegal abortion are the third-leading cause of death among pregnant women there that Mexico City has just voted for legalization, you think? They are tired of letting women die just to keep their own religious right happy.
Do you really reckon that the majority of the Lege is tired of voting for bad public policy? Because deep down, I suspect it was more likely the $400,000,000 price tag.