This session of the Texas Legislature saw 13 anti-choice bills introduced -- 10 in the House and 3 in the Senate. And in the House, only HB 1212 even made it out to the floor. A precedent-setting point of order sent it back for a reprinting on Tuesday, and it fared no better today.
Phil King, author of this wonder of a parental rights bill that could have sent parents to jail for suggesting their daughter have an abortion, made an altruistic show of falling on his sword to help make sure today’s House business got finished by the midnight deadline. He allowed that yet another sustainable point of order had been made against his bill, and asked that it be "placed on the table, subject to call."
There has been no action on two of the Senate's anti-woman, anti-freedom, anti-privacy bills since they were referred to committee. But HB 1212 has an identical companion bill in the Senate, SB 1150, which was rushed into public hearing this afternoon by the State Affairs Committee.
The public testimony on the bill lasted about two minutes, the only in-person testimony being provided by the Texas Alliance for Life. Since the vice-chair of the committee is Tommy Williams, the biggest misogynist in the Senate bar none, there is no reason to believe it won't be passed out favorably. But that doesn't mean that the Senate will pass SB 1150, or even vote on it – as they won’t if 11 Senate Dems stand strong and refuse to suspend the rules in order to consider it, as they did with Mary Denny’s scurrilous attempt to restore Jim Crow. And as we have already seen, the House Dems stand ready to nitpick it to pieces.
So even though it's not completely over yet, the situation is looking better than I would have believed possible a couple of weeks ago. At least a woman in Texas won't be driving 200-300 miles just to hear a doctor deliver the state-mandated threat of breast cancer 24 hours before her abortion, or lose her right to say "no" to the state’s factually challenged "informational materials" -- a bit of statutory repression found unconstitutional in a 2003 federal challenge to the same requirement in an Alabama law.
I'm almost ready to send a thank-you note to Tom DeLay. I've come to suspect that some of the usually impervious Lege Republicans might actually be paying attention to their constituents' calls, e-mails and letters opposing this and other anti-choice bills, if only out of a newborn fear of losing their body armor and having to wear DeLay's dirty laundry instead in 2006.
"Pssst! C'mere a minute. Y'all didn't mess up and find places for all them abortion bills on the calendars already, didja? Well, good ... and listen, the less said the better, but let's just keep it that way."
But still . . . the session’s not over until Mary Denny leaves town for her honeymoon, so right now another round of calls and emails to our senators sure couldn’t hurt.
Crossposted at The Daily Kos
Rabid conservatism defeats itself!
Link! by moiv : 5/12/2005 09:51:00 PM
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