Texas’ crusade against abortion access and, by extension, human rights and free speech writ large, continues to escalate. On Tuesday, the state Senate passed passed SB 2880, a behemoth piece of legislation that, among many, many awful things, would allow anyone in Texas to sue anyone who manufactures, mails, or delivers medication abortion pills to a Texas resident for $100,000.
The bill would also establish civil and criminal penalties for those who help pay for abortions. Further, SB 2880 would allow people to sue internet providers that host information about medication abortion, and prohibits the mere acts of “[creating], [editing], [uploading], [publishing], [hosting], [maintaining], or [registering] a domain name” for anything that might help someone get abortion pills. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warned earlier this week that, under SB 2880, if you so much as “exchange emails or have an online chat about seeking an abortion, you could violate the bill.” They added, “Even your social media posts could put you at risk.”
SB 2880 would also allow individuals to sue those who send abortion pills for wrongful death and expand the statute of limitations for someone to do so. Torts law, or laws allowing someone to sue for damages, typically has a two-year window—SB 2880 would expand this to six years.
The wide-ranging bill seems to build on Texas’ notorious SB 8, the 2021 law that bans abortion at six weeks and allows citizens to sue anyone who helps someone access abortion for at least $10,000. SB 2880 even includes a component to disincentivize lawyers from bringing legal challenges against the bill by making lawyers financially liable for all legal fees for both sides should they try to bring a case forward.
“The intent is to be a very strong and unequivocal statement to those who would ship these pills into Texas that, don’t do that,” state Sen. Brian Hughes (R) said of his bill this week. “This is a strong statement about these pills and their harm to little babies and to women. It’s strong.” Medication abortion, to restate what all credible, objective studies have already shown, is highly safe and effective. Banning abortion and persecuting doctors isn’t.
As more and more patients, especially in abortion-banned states, rely on medication abortion shipped from out-of-state, the anti-abortion movement is desperately escalating its war on telehealth access to abortion pills. In states like Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, New York, and California, shield laws protect health care providers who prescribe and send abortion pills to patients in states that ban abortion from facing legal repercussions. In February, New York passed a law allowing doctors to leave their names off prescriptions for abortion pills to avoid being targeted. But anti-abortion lawmakers in states like Texas are trying to challenge these laws.
In December, Texas sued a New York-based doctor who allegedly mailed pills to a Dallas woman for $100,000; Louisiana is attempting to extradite and prosecute that same doctor. Anti-abortion organizations in Texas are even openly recruiting men to file legal actions against intimate partners who’ve had abortions, in a bid to identify out-of-state abortion providers and trigger lawsuits that could potentially ban the interstate mailing of abortion pills nationwide. Earlier this month, Tennessee’s Senate passed a bill that would hold any individual or group that ships abortion pills liable for $5 million in damages.
SB 2880 further appears to fold in a bill Texas Republicans introduced in November, insidiously named the “Women and Child Safety Act,” which would allow citizens to sue internet service providers for at least $10,000 if they host pro-abortion rights websites. This closely reflects the federal KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act) bill, which also claims to protect children on the internet, but could instead be used by anti-abortion attorneys-general to block online abortion information.
In addition to SB 2880, Hughes introduced SB 1976, an incredibly bizarre bill that would require wastewater treatment plants to test for abortion pills and hormones commonly found in birth control, as well as testosterone and estrogen, claiming all of these pose a threat to pregnant people and children. The goal, legal experts warned, is a ban on mifepristone and misoprostol—the most common pills involved in medication abortion—and potentially even birth control, by lying that these medications are unsafe for the environment and public health.
The Texas Senate also just passed the insidious “Life of the Mother Act” (HB 44 and SB 31), which claims to “clarify” when health providers are permitted to perform emergency abortions. But HB 44/SB 31 still doesn’t allow doctors to perform abortions for unsafe, nonviable pregnancies if someone isn’t imminently at risk of dying. Top anti-abortion activists who wrote the bill have dangerously referred to it as a revival of the state’s 1925 abortion ban, which makes it a criminal offense for anyone to not just perform an abortion but even to “furnish the means” for one—that is, help someone access abortion. Reproductive rights advocates warn the bill is effectively a backdoor to re-enforcing the 1925 law.
To state the obvious, all of these bills, certainly SB 2880, are incredibly legally dubious—it’s hard to say how SB 2880 can override shield laws in other states or so explicitly target online speech. The Texas Tribune notes that SB 2880 could “face a harder road in the House,” where even some anti-abortion lawmakers may question its constitutionality or the optics of going after free speech so directly.
So… that’s what’s going on in the Texas legislature right now! For no particular reason, might I recommend making a donation to a Texas abortion fund or reproductive health legal defense fund.
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