The Texas House of Representatives passed a vigorously contested bill on Wednesday restricting access to abortion.
The vote was called shortly after 11 a.m. As the votes were counted, one spectator in the gallery stood up and shouted, “As a queer woman of color, I object to these proceedings.” Security guards approached her and others who began to shout as the vote came in: 96 to 49. House members and supporters in the gallery applauded as officers led some protesters out and carried others from the chamber.
The bill closely resembles one that the House passed last month, and which was stalled at the end of a special session of the Legislature by an 11-hour filibuster by State Senator Wendy Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth. But her victory proved temporary: Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, called a second special session of the Legislature to take up the abortion bill once again.
The bill, like its predecessor, would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and hold abortion clinics to the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers, among other requirements. Its supporters argue that the heightened requirements will protect women’s health; opponents counter that the restrictions are intended solely as a burden on the clinics that perform abortions and will impose expenses that will force many of them to close.
The House held a preliminary vote on Tuesday evening and approved the measure largely along party lines, with 98 members for and 49 against. Now the bill moves to the Texas Senate, where a committee has already scheduled a hearing for Thursday to consider it and, probably, to pass it along to the full Senate for final approval. That vote could come by the end of the week.
With the Senate largely inactive until then, opponents of the bill took to the road. Senator Davis, whose political profile has been raised to national recognition by her filibuster, joined Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, for a rally in Houston as part of a “Stand With Texas Women” bus tour that will hit the state’s major cities through the weekend.
The fight over the abortion issue has led to an outpouring of political activism on both sides of the issue that has startled lawmakers and swelled the presence of Capitol security forces. Thousands of demonstrators — the bill’s supporters wearing blue, and the opponents, orange — thronged the hallways of the Capitol and jammed the House spectator gallery. After the Tuesday night vote, opponents of the bill chanted “Shame on you” at lawmakers.
Upon hearing of the provisional passage of the bill on Tuesday night, Ms. Richards, the daughter of former Gov. Ann Richards, sent out a Twitter message that stated, “Tonight the TX House passed a bill that will take women back decades — and we’re not going.”
Date: July 10, 2013