Earlier this month, radical anti-Life legislators in the United States House of Representatives reintroduced legislation that would make abortion up to birth legal in all 50 states. The dangerous anti-Life bill, deceptively called the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), would legalize the killing of the preborn for any reason at any stage of pregnancy. This would render the Pro-Life protections in Texas and other Pro-Life states unenforceable. This insidious attempt to subvert the will of the Pro-Life majority by a small group of anti-Life radicals in Congress shows how important Pro-Life representation is at every level of government.
WPHA has previously been introduced in Congress and did not pass. Bill sponsors, including Representatives Judy Chu (D-CA), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Veronica Escobar (D-TX), and Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), announced their intention to reintroduce the radical proposal in mid-May. The effort to reintroduce the bill came in the weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case which concerns Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. The strong Pro-Life law protects preborn babies from elective abortion beginning at 15 weeks gestation.
As Texas Right to Life previously reported, the Mississippi law is a challenge to the viability standard established by Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states. Pro-Life states have passed laws gradually expanding protections for innocent preborn Life, and now one such law will be before the Court.
A misleading statement from sponsors of the anti-Life WPHA read, “This week’s news out of the Supreme Court was an urgent call to action: reproductive rights are under direct, imminent attack. Our bill, the Women’s Health Protection Act, would protect against unconstitutional laws like Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban – laws that attack people’s freedom to make decisions about their own bodies and which directly contradict decades of Supreme Court precedent.”
The people pushing for unrestricted legal killing of preborn babies try to describe abortion as “health care” and act like abortion is necessary (which is never the case). Ironically, Pro-Life laws, which harm no one and protect innocent human Life from violent destruction, are described by anti-Lifers as an attack. In the diabolical view of anti-Lifers, elective abortion for any reason is “life-saving” and a “right”; Pro-Life laws that legitimately save laws are “violent” and “unjust.” If WPHA were to be signed into law, legislation as radical as that passed in New York state would be the law of the land across the United States.
Not only would WHPA make elective abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy, the federal legislation would also nullify all parental notification and consent laws, life-saving waiting periods, and informed consent measures like the Texas Sonogram Law and Woman’s Right to Know. Most recently, Pro-Life Texans celebrated the passage of the Texas Heartbeat Act, which would also be squashed by the anti-Life WHPA. Texas Right to Life has worked with Pro-Life champions in the Texas Legislature to ensure that these Pro-Life measures expand a Culture of Life in our state. Federal legislation effectively nullifying them would be a tremendous setback for Life.
Not only is the legislation anti-Life, the bill is also fundamentally anti-women. As Live Action News noted, “The bill calls abortion ‘essential’ to women’s health and ‘central’ to women’s ability to ‘participate equally’ in the economic and social life of the nation — an anti-feminist, anti-woman idea that at its core labels women as unequal to men without the “right” to kill their preborn children.”
The WHPA’s serious threat to states’ ability to protect preborn babies coincides with the growing Sanctuary City for the Unborn movement sweeping across Texas. Dozens of Texas towns and cities, including cities as large as Lubbock, have passed an ordinance banning abortion. This grassroots movement shows how strongly Texans value Life. While the federal government seeks to overreach and infiltrate states with anti-Life ideology, Texans are taking a stand.
Join Texas Right to Life in defending Life and liberty in the Lone Star State.