Promoting Women’s Health…Yeah…That’s the Ticket

Bob "Coathanger" Deuell

In the Texas State Senate today the Democratic voting bloc, minus one, is blocking a particularly disingenuous bill, SB 537, Similar bills have been passed into law in at least 4 other states.  The bill, authored by State Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, will place new licensing standards on abortion clinics in Texas, standards that are being touted as new requirements that are meant to enhance safety and promote women’s health.

It’s real intent is to put unecessarily restrictive standards on abortion clinics, standards that will lead to closure of all but 5 of the currently operating abortion clinics in the state.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists oppose the bill and have stated that “only five of the state’s 37 abortion clinics are licensed as ambulatory surgical centers, a requirement for performing abortions beyond the 16th week of pregnancy. Most of the remaining clinics provide only drug-induced abortions and would likely have to close, unable to meet the renovation costs required to become a surgical center.”

The actual purpose of the bill, as in similar bills in Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi and North Dakota, is to make it harder for women to have abortions in Texas.

But Deuell, who has all 19 Republican votes and one Democratic vote, needs one more Democrat to vote to move his bill to the Senate floor. So what does Senator Deuell do? He meets with the Democratic holdouts and tries to convince them that this is a bill that will promote women’s health and safety by placing stricter regulations on clinics, regulations that are completely unnecessary.

And yes, contrary to what Deuell is claiming, the bill will not promote women’s health and safety, it will actually do damage to women’s health as they find they must seek dangerous and unsafe alternatives: the “Coathanger Solution.”

And the only Senate Democrat who is buying any of Deuell’s bat guano logic is State Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr. of Brownsville, who likes every anti-choice bill that is set before him.