AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republicans have passed new abortion restrictions expected to close almost every abortion clinic in the second most populous U.S. state.

The Republican-controlled Senate voted for the bill while hundreds of protesters screamed from the gallery. Reporters and Democrats saw the voting begin after midnight, but Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said it began just before.

Texas' special legislative session ended at midnight, and Democrats spent most of the day using procedural maneuvers to delay a final vote on the bill. Republicans cited rules to eventually force a vote on the legislation.

The bill bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and requires that all procedures take place in a surgical center.

Doctors who perform abortions would also need admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. The surgical center requirement would shut down 37 of Texas' 42 abortion clinics.

Fallen668 wrote:
As a Texan, I am hoping that this will be the shot heard around the state to mobilize to voters to finally kick out of office the republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and teabaggers or whatever else label they want to use to describe themselves this week.

 Seaward wrote:

Fallen668 wrote:
As a Texan, I am hoping that this will be the shot heard around the state to mobilize to voters to finally kick out of office the republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and teabaggers or whatever else label they want to use to describe themselves this week.

That assumes all but a small minority are pro-abortion.

 Fafnir wrote:
So you consider 74% to be a small minority?

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/06/24/2202991/poll-texans-oppose-sb-5/?mobile=nc

 Fafnir wrote:
Even with the polls you cited, you would actually consider 49% and 47% to be a small minority (and this isn't even including undecided views)?

Fallen668 wrote:
As a Texan, I am hoping that this will be the shot heard around the state to mobilize to voters to finally kick out of office the republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and teabaggers or whatever else label they want to use to describe themselves this week.

Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/us/politics/texas-abortion-bill.html

AUSTIN, Tex. — Hours after claiming that they successfully passed some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country, Republican lawmakers reversed course on Wednesday and said a disputed late-night vote on the bill did not follow legislative procedures, rendering the vote moot and giving Democrats a bitterly fought if short-lived victory.


Jennifer Whitney for The Texas Tribune
A sonogram at the Whole Woman’s Health Surgical Center in San Antonio, one of five Texas abortion clinics that would meet tighter abortion restrictions under a Texas bill. Opponents of the legislation said it would force 37 other clinics to close.
The reversal capped a remarkable day in the Texas Legislature here. A petite Fort Worth Democrat in pink sneakers staged a 10-hour-plus filibuster marathon in which she never sat down. Abortion rights activists succeeded in disrupting Republican senators, and the fate of a bill that Gov. Rick Perry had made a priority devolved into a legislative mess so thick that even senators who had voted on the bill could not say for certain whether they had indeed voted on the bill.

The state Senate’s vote came right at a midnight Tuesday deadline, amid widespread confusion the noise of a chanting crowd of the bill’s opponents in an upstairs gallery. Senate Democrats said the vote took place past the deadline at 12:02 a.m. or 12:03 a.m., while Republicans disputed those claims, saying the vote was legitimate.

But at 3 a.m., Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the presiding officer of the Senate and a Republican supporter of the bill, told lawmakers and reporters that although the bill passed on a 19-to-10 vote, the bill could not be signed in the presence of the Senate and was therefore dead, blaming “an unruly mob using Occupy Wall Street tactics” as the primary cause.

“With all the ruckus and noise going on,” Mr. Dewhurst said, he could not complete administrative duties to make the vote official and sign the bill. Senate Democrats and women’s right’s advocates said the real reason the vote could not be made official was a time stamp on official documents that showed the bill passed after midnight. The Legislature’s official Web site first posted that the Senate’s vote occurred on Wednesday, after the midnight deadline, but the date was later changed to Tuesday for unknown reasons.

The reversal served as an embarassing episode for Mr. Dewhurst and Republican senators on a divisive bill that was closely watched around the nation, both by anti-abortion activists and supporters of abortion rights.

“The G.O.P. Senate leadership comes out of this whole process looking somewhat disingenuous, deceptive and disorganized,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.

In the final minutes before the midnight deadline, Republican senators had interrupted a filibuster that began at 11 a.m. But their attempts to push forward with a vote on the bill caused the bill’s opponents in the gallery to erupt into screams and cheers. Attempts to bring about order failed.

It was in those chaotic moments that Republicans initially said the vote was taken and the bill approved. But after hours of closed-door meetings, Mr. Dewhurst signaled defeat in passing the bill, and as word trickled out with the news, hundreds of the bill’s opponents who had camped out in the Capitol rotunda and in the hallways erupted into loud applause.

The bill sought to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, require abortion clinics to meet the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers and mandate that a doctor who performs abortions have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

Supporters of the bill, including Governor Perry and other top Republicans, said the measures would protect women’s health and hold clinics to safe standards, but women’s right’s advocates said the legislation amounted to an unconstitutional, politically motivated attempt to shut legal abortion clinics. The bill’s opponents said it will likely cause all but five of the 42 abortion clinics in the state to close, because the building renovations and equipment upgrades necessary to meet the surgical-center standards would be too costly.

Republicans, who control both the state Senate and House, will likely have a second chance at the bill. The governor, who called the special session and put the abortion bill on the agenda, may now call a second special session and once again tell lawmakers to consider the bill, known as Senate Bill 5. Political analysts said the bill will likely pass if a second special session is called, not only because of the large number of Republicans supporting it, but because the increased time will limit the delaying tactics that can be tried by Democrats.
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The bill sought to make Texas the 12th state to bar most abortions at 20 weeks after fertilization and later — a step that has been blocked in three states so far as unconstitutional. The more pressing concern for clinic managers and advocates for women’s rights was the requirement that all 42 abortion clinics in the state be licensed as ambulatory surgery centers.

Five clinics performing late-term abortions already meet that standard. But for most of the remaining 37, the new restriction would require costly renovations or relocation to meet architectural and equipment requirements. The five clinics are located in large cities – Austin, San Antonio and Dallas each have one, and Houston has two. The burden on those five clinics to provide women’s health services will be extreme, and women in rural areas and small towns far from those cities will be underserved, advocates for abortion rights said.

Two clinics in McAllen and Harlingen in South Texas – the only abortion providers in the area – would close if the bill had passed, they said, forcing women seeking abortions to travel a few miles across the border into Mexico rather than drive four hours to San Antonio, both for surgical procedures and abortion-inducing drugs.

“We know that it would shut down dozens of clinics in the state of Texas, a state of 26 million people, and there will be women who cannot reach a health care provider to get reproductive health care for hundreds of miles,” said Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and a daughter of Ann W. Richards, the former Texas governor. “This is the thing that’s frightening. Women will do whatever they have to do to take care of themselves.”

The Senate convened shortly after 11 a.m. to take up the version of the bill that the House had already passed. The Fort Worth Democrat, Senator Wendy Davis, began talking at 11:18 a.m. in a filibuster attempt to prevent lawmakers from voting on the bill before the midnight deadline. She spoke for hours in the carpeted chamber. Senate rules set strict requirements on how she could perform a filibuster – she was forbidden from straying off topic or sitting in her chair, for example – and if she was found to have violated the rules three times, her filibuster would effectively come to an end.

Ms. Davis is something of a filibuster star among Texas Democrats. At the end of the legislative term in 2011, she forced Mr. Perry to call a special session after her filibuster ran the clock out on a budget bill that included cuts in public education. But at 10 p.m. on Tuesday, 11 hours after she first stood up, Mr. Dewhurst sustained a violation against her for straying off the topic. It was her third violation. As the senators debated the next steps, Ms. Davis remained standing, because it was uncertain whether the filibuster had officially ended.

Democrats accused Mr. Dewhurst of going back on his earlier statements that he would bring the end of the filibuster to a vote if Ms. Davis had three violations. As the clock neared midnight and the crowd erupted, several Democratic senators said they believed they were voting on a procedural matter when the vote for the abortion bill was taken. “I don’t mind losing fair and square, but this has been a total sham and mockery of the rules,” said State Senator Leticia Van de Putte, a San Antonio Democrat.

Amy Hagstrom Miller, the president of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates abortion and women’s health clinics in Texas and two other states, said the bill would force her to shut down the group’s five clinics in Texas. One of them, in San Antonio, complies with ambulatory surgical center requirements, but Ms. Hagstrom Miller said it had operated at an annual loss of $400,000 since opening two years ago.

Ms. Hagstrom Miller said opening clinics that met the new requirements would be financially untenable. “I believe in providing really compassionate, medically acceptable care, but why would I do it in Texas? I will surely look elsewhere,” she said.

Another of the group’s clinics is the one in McAllen, close to the Mexican border. It was quiet outside the McAllen clinic on Tuesday afternoon, but the area is heavily Catholic, and there is strong opposition to abortion. Signs protesting the clinic are posted on the building next door.

Already a large number of women cross the border to obtain abortion-inducing drugs in Mexico, Ms. Hagstrom Miller said, and she expects the number to rise if the clinic closes.

“We’ve already seen women taking matters into their own hands,” she said, because of an existing state requirement of a 24-hour waiting period for abortions, which forces women to go to the clinic twice. Many women seeking abortions, she said, are already mothers and do not have the time or money to travel long distances for the procedure.

“I’ve seen women who asked their partners to punch them in the stomach repeatedly,” Ms. Hagstrom Miller said, adding that she believed the law and widespread closings of clinics would force more women to attempt “self-induced abortions.”

 Ahtman wrote:

Fallen668 wrote:
As a Texan, I am hoping that this will be the shot heard around the state to mobilize to voters to finally kick out of office the republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and teabaggers or whatever else label they want to use to describe themselves this week.

As a quick aside, Libertarians would be against this, as they generally don't want government involved in much of anything, and would see it as Government meddling. Directly from their party platform:

 Alfndrate wrote:
MGS, you besmirch my honor good sir I'm libertarian and I'm against this bill whole heartedly.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
MGS, you besmirch my honor good sir I'm libertarian and I'm against this bill whole heartedly.

How could I besmirch your honor? I said true libertarians would be against the bill? It infringes on a woman's right to self determine her medical and biological choices.

Libertarians in favor of further restricting a woman's freedoms to choose the course of potential pregnancy should review their Libertarian status...

 Alfndrate wrote:

Because I'm fairly certain I'm not a "true Libertarian" What does that mean? less government meddling, more freedoms? I could be Libertarian in name alone, but this bill is stupid, and I'm glad that it failed.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:

Because I'm fairly certain I'm not a "true Libertarian" What does that mean? less government meddling, more freedoms? I could be Libertarian in name alone, but this bill is stupid, and I'm glad that it failed.

I meant a true libertarian instead of a hardline conservative christian who talks a lot about personal freedoms then immediately presses for/supports/endorses candidates who further a theocratic agenda, such as we're seeing with this legislation. The word Libertarian became very popular in the tea party and the republican party over the last 5 or so years, but, as I mentioned, I see it being subverted to suit a certain slant of political and religious agenda.

Less government meddling and freedoms would include religiously mandated restrictions on half the population's reproductive organs and their right to self determine what happens with them.

Fallen668 wrote:As a Texan, I am hoping that this will be the shot heard around the state to mobilize to voters to finally kick out of office the republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and teabaggers or whatever else label they want to use to describe themselves this week.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

Fallen668 wrote:
As a Texan, I am hoping that this will be the shot heard around the state to mobilize to voters to finally kick out of office the republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and teabaggers or whatever else label they want to use to describe themselves this week.

As a quick aside, Libertarians would be against this, as they generally don't want government involved in much of anything, and would see it as Government meddling. Directly from their party platform:

True libertarians would be against it, but during my time in central PA, I met a swathe of folks using that title who were just ultra conservative religiously right wing. It's possibly, from my short time on this continent, the most hijacked term in America.

 whembly wrote:
meh... we're complaining about banning it after 20 weeks? o.O

Isn't that right inline with most European countries? (20-24 weeks?)

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 whembly wrote:
meh... we're complaining about banning it after 20 weeks? o.O

Isn't that right inline with most European countries? (20-24 weeks?)

No, we're complaining about a cynical piece of legislation designed to close down around 40 clinics in Texas, thus easing in a total ban.

I am certainly complaining about the religious right trying to force their beliefs on the rest of tax paying America.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Cant we just let texas secede from the union?

 whembly wrote:
Total ban? That's not what it's going on here...

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Cant we just let texas secede from the union?