Less than 24 hours after a historic Democratic victory in Texas state elected offices, state Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson said Tuesday he will not continue Ken Paxton’s practice of suing doctors in other states for sending abortion drugs to patients here.
It’s the first major salvo against the state’s four-year-old quasi-abortion ban, which makes the procedure virtually impossible to access in the state and will likely be the first of many adjustments to make the ban less rigid. The attorney general’s office led by Ken Paxton, who gave up his post to run for Senate, has been a powerful defender of state laws banning abortion, and a Democrat ascending to the position removes a powerful tool for the nation’s anti-abortion movement.
The first thing I do when people ask me about abortion is point out that I’m not a legislator and I can’t change abortion law,” Johnson told the Texas Tribune. “What I can do is stop using Texas’ abortion laws as an instrument of persecution and intimidation, harassment and political showboating. These four things happened.
It is illegal for Texas doctors to mail abortion drugs into the state, and Paxton has sued doctors in other states who prescribe the drugs, preventing Texans from getting the pills, abortion advocates say. Those lawsuits ran up against so-called blue-state protection laws that protect doctors who send out abortion drugs.
Johnson said he would no longer pursue these foreign doctors. “I will not maintain the legally absurd position that Texas law has extraterritorial effect. I can honor the protective laws of other states.”
Even if it removes a barrier to access to abortion pills, Democrats won’t repeal the abortion ban anytime soon.
Despite Governor Greg Abbott’s increasing use of executive power, Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa cannot legally repeal the abortion ban with the stroke of her own pen. She also told Politico in September that repealing the ban would not be a priority because it would require Republicans to pass such a bill, which seems unlikely.
Instead, Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, points out that it can significantly limit how the law is enforced. Hinojosa said she would work to end penalties for doctors who perform life-saving abortions, although lawmakers provided additional protections for doctors in those situations last year.
“It may influence how parts of the law are implemented, and how certain exceptions are interpreted, as well as other reasonable additional restrictions that could eventually become law,” he said.
Abortion advocates like John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, aren’t worried about the passage of a new “standalone abortion bill” in the upcoming session, but he fears that new Democratic leaders will roll back decades of Republican advances in restricting the procedure.
He could see Hinojosa and other Democrats making it harder to implement programs like the former Alternatives to Abortion program, now renamed Thriving Texas Families, which sends more than $200 million to private contractors to, in part, counsel pregnant women against abortion, among other services. He said Hinojosa has consistently voted against the program and he could see her funding it or moving the funding to another program.
The agency that oversees the program, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, has an agency commissioner, Stephanie Muth, whose term expires Feb. 1. Seago said he also fears that Hinojosa could also use his own appointment power to appoint someone else to head the agency and begin to change the way these private contractors are scrutinized.
There’s also the upcoming Sunset process that could grant Hinojosa greater influence. HHSC is facing sunset review, in which lawmakers determine what to change within an agency, including eliminating entire departments or agencies.
Lawmakers have more leeway to reshape budget priorities for an agency facing a sunset review, which could also include significantly reducing funding for the Thriving Texas Families program.
The state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee also faces a sunset review. Women’s health advocates have blasted the committee, which is under the Texas Department of State Health Services, for delaying the release of its latest biennial report this year, which is expected to include a review of deaths that occurred after the state’s abortion ban took effect. MPs also called on Parliament to allow it to examine abortion-related deaths, but to no avail.
Hinojosa could also propose his own slate of nominations to the Texas Medical Board. A bloc of 19 board members have terms expiring in April and she could appoint people who could review the board’s directions. doctors about the legal protections they have when performing an abortion to save a patient’s life.
Two years ago, the TMB issued guidelines for doctors that fell far short of what health care advocates wanted. At first, the panel was hesitant to propose how to interpret medical exceptions to state law, even after the Texas Supreme Court asked them to “evaluate various hypothetical circumstances, provide best practices, identify red lines, and more.” “.
The TMB reworked the guidelines, but many were still dissatisfied, saying it placed too great a burden on the doctor giving the injections when seconds count in saving a mother’s life.
Seago also believes that despite Johnson’s reported refusal to actively pursue the flow of drugs from other states, other states will continue their own challenges to prevent abortion drugs from arriving in the mail. He adds that the state’s “bounty hunter” law, which allows private prosecutions of abortion drug providers who violate Texas’ abortion ban, will not be revisited in the next session and will remain in effect.
Still, reproductive abortion advocates like Raven E. Freeborn, executive director of Avow Texas, a statewide group that advocates for abortion access and reproductive rights in Texas, won’t let the Senate’s Republican majority stop them from trying to overturn the abortion ban with a new law.
“We are opting for the clearest vision of abortion access, which is access to abortion without exceptions,” Freeborn said. “I think it’s important for us to look at this opportunity right now and be as steadfast about the world as we need it to be right now.”
She noted that it took decades for the Republican Party to ban abortion in Texas and that her group is prepared for a long fight. “They didn’t do it in a single legislative session, but they were consistent in what they said. And that’s why we’re stepping up to be just as bold.”
Disclosure: The University of Houston has financially supported the Texas Tribune for the past five years. The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that is funded in part by donations from its members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial support plays no role in our journalism. Find a full list of them and more information about our financial and disclosure policies here.
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