AUSTIN, TX – They’re doing the Texas Two-Step in Austin, and the nation’s abortion rights activists are watching closely.
Step one of this political dance is in the Texas House. More than 3500 people on Tuesday registered their positions on House Bill 2 that bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and forces abortion clinics to upgrade their facilities.
Nearly twice as many people registered in support of the bill.
About a thousand people wanted to testify before the State Affairs Committee, but fewer than a hundred got to talk. Just past midnight and after more than eight hours of testimony, the committee voted along party lines to send the bill to the full House, where it is expected to pass.
The second step in this political dance is in the Texas Senate, which will start debate next week.
Fort Worth Democrat Wendy Davis’s 11-hour filibuster helped kill the bill at the end of the first special session.
She’s not predicting victory, but she’s also not giving up, “I won’t concede that we won’t be able to defeat this bill even in this session. Maybe we’ll lose this time, but we’re going to go down fighting.”
North Carolina’s anti-abortion senators tentatively approved a bill that allows any healthcare provider to opt out of abortion-related services, and prohibits city and county health plans from offering abortion coverage except in cases of rape, incest or to save the mother’s life.
But it still has a few more steps to go before it passes or fails.
