The latest monthly report from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission on induced terminations of pregnancies (ITOP) released today shows that claims about medically necessary abortions in Texas abortion law by Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign are completely false.
Harris and her proxies claim that doctors cannot or are not willing to perform abortions in cases when the pregnancy endangers a woman’s life in Texas and other states with pro-life laws.
For example, when the Texas Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Texas’ pro-life laws in Zurawski v. Texas, Harris said, “This Texas Supreme Court ruling means women will continue to be denied access to necessary medical care, putting their health and lives at risk.” The latest data from the HHSC ITOP reports prove otherwise, showing that doctors in Texas performed 113 abortions to save pregnant women’s lives or health in the first 22 months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
From July 2022 through April 2024, reported elective abortions in Texas quickly dropped from thousands per month to zero. However, during this period, doctors reported performing 113 medically necessary abortions, with 11 reported in April, all in hospitals. The monthly average of reported abortions for medical necessity (to protect the life or health of the woman) after Dobbs is 5.1. That number is comparable to the monthly average before Dobbs (January 2022 through May 2022), which is 2.3.
“The latest report reaffirms that Kamala Harris’ dire claims about Texas’ protective abortion laws are completely baseless,” said Amy O’Donnell, Texas Alliance for Life’s Communications Director. “Texas’ laws continue to save unborn babies from abortion while also protecting women’s lives in those rare and tragic cases where pregnancy endangers a pregnant woman’s life or health.”
“Since the Court overturned Roe, no doctor has been prosecuted by a district attorney, sanctioned by the Texas Medical Board, or sued by the Attorney General, and no pregnant woman has lost her life because of the provisions of Texas’ abortion laws, even with more than 360,000 live births in Texas each year,” O’Donnell added.
Background
- In 2021, the Texas Legislature passed, and Gov. Greg Abbott signed HB 1280, the Human Life Protection Act, which protects unborn children from elective abortion beginning at conception. That law has an exception for medically necessary abortions when the pregnancy causes “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.” That law went into effect shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
- On May 31, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court, in Zurawski v. Texas, recently determined that the exception in the Texas Human Life Protection Act is both constitutional and clear. Physicians may use “reasonable medical judgment” to determine whether a pregnancy requires a medically necessary abortion. The Court emphasized that the law does not require a physician to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent danger before performing a life-saving abortion.
- Shortly afterward, on June 21, the Texas Medical Board, which regulates physicians, issued rules explaining the law, including the provision that the medical necessity exception does not require the woman’s death to be imminent before a doctor can perform an abortion.
