Posted on 07/13/2013 2:11:12 AM PDT by lbryce
The Texas Senate gave final passage on Friday to one of the strictest anti-abortion measures in the country, legislation championed by Gov. Rick Perry, who rallied the Republican-controlled Legislature late last month after a Democratic filibuster blocked the bill and intensified already passionate resistance by abortion-rights supporters.
The bill 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 say that the strengthened requirements for the structures and doctors will protect womens health; opponents argue that the restrictions are actually intended to put financial pressure on the clinics that perform abortions and will force most of them to shut their doors.
Mr. Perry applauded lawmakers for passing the bill, saying Today the Texas Legislature took its final step in our historic effort to protect life. Legislators and anti-abortion activists, he said tirelessly defended our smallest and most vulnerable Texans and future Texans.
Debate over the bill has ignited fierce exchanges between lawmakers, and tense confrontations between opponents of the bill, who have worn orange, and supporters of the bill wearing blue. Signs and slogans have been everywhere, bearing long, impassioned arguments or the simple scrawl on a young mans orange shirt, a Twitter-esque @TXLEGE: U R dumb.
The bill had come nearly this far before: a version had been brought to the Senate in the previous session of the Legislature, in June, and was killed by State Senator Wendy Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth, with an 11-hour filibuster that stalled the bill until after the deadline for ending the session. The filibuster became an overnight sensation on Twitter and other forms of social media, with more than 180,000 people viewing the filibuster live online
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
He makes you "do your job".
Umm, this is Texas. Obama would have to show ID to get in ;)
Thank you. I was waiting for this. Now I can go to bed. :)
Fantastic work everyone!
? Where was Wendy Davis and her diaper/catheter?
An immoral, unconstitutional bill. The Texas Code now describes a class of sub-humans who are not accorded Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment equal protection for their supreme God-given, unalienable right, the right to live.
Which not only contradicts the U.S. Constitution, it contradicts their own Code.
Arbitrary, capricious, unreasonable, illogical, lawless law-making.
My reaction as well, nothing to celebrate here. For 20 weeks, the weakest among us face the possibility of being handed a death sentence depending on convenience.
And Eternal Vigilance bashes prolifers once again! :)
Always on the case, aren’t you?
TX will go from 80 death centers down to 76.
But yeah, aside from that, nothing much accomplished! :)
Edit from 80 down to 4. Sorry.
I didn’t bash pro-lifers. I gave an accurate description of this lawless law.
Which you can’t refute, because like a liberal, you’re going on emotion, not reason. You’re simply following the leaders you’ve devoted yourself to, and letting them do your thinking for you.
Thank you. It’s great to see folks around here who have thought this through.
I actually agree. AS much as I want to see a win here, it should be an outright ban.
The real victory in this bill is that death centers now have to clean up to medical standards, which should have been there all along. It will force many out of business. But that’s about it.
So, if you shut down some sub-par Nazi death camps, but “legally” authorize the operation of clean, efficient Nazi death camps, the Nazis will simply build bigger, cleaner, more efficient Nazi death camps.
If you’ve got the governmental power to regulate mass murder, you have the power to stop the bloodshed.
Don’t worry they have already started judge shopping to block it.
Right, I’m a liberal because I support a law that shuts down most of the killing centres but not all of then.
I said you’re acting like a liberal, on emotion. Can’t you read?
It’s a huge step in the right direction.
There are just 678 clinics (as of 2011) in all of America. This is down from 2200.
I’m not quite sure how hard numbers on the total clinics counts as ‘emotion’.
You say it’s a “huge step in the right direction.” But the bill is intrinsically immoral and unconstitutional. Which is in fact, by definition, if you care about morality and the Constitution, a huge step in the wrong direction.
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