Issue #9 TEXAS ABORTION BAN GIVES NEW MEANING TO BEYOND THE PALE

KEEP ABORTION ACCESSIBLE. SPEAK UP AND SPEAK OUT.

QUICK QUIZ

True or False
A. In Texas abortion is illegal as early as the sixth week of pregnancy.
True: In mid-May, Texas passed a law banning abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
B. Ordinary citizens can legally enforce the Texas abortion ban.
True: Part of the law allows ordinary citizens to sue anyone helping a woman get an abortion in Texas.

*Nothing fake about our facts. Check out Resources.

TEXAS ABORTION BAN GIVES NEW MEANING TO BEYOND THE PALE

In early June, Paxton Smith, valedictorian at her Dallas high school, scrapped her approved speech in a defiant criticism of Texas’s extreme new abortion law. Smith spoke passionately about the horror of this law:

"I cannot give up this platform to promote complacency and peace when there is a war on my body and a war on my rights. A war on the rights of your mothers, a war on the rights of your sisters, a war on the rights of your daughters. We cannot stay silent.
I have dreams and hopes and ambitions. Every girl graduating today does…And without our input and without our consent, our control over that future has been stripped away from us."
Read the full text of Smith’s brave speech here.

Several states have fetal heartbeat legislation, but the Texas law is worse. Ordinarily, government officials would enforce such a law, but the Texas law actually prohibits this. Rather, it deputizes ordinary citizens — including from outside Texas — to sue clinics, doctors, and anyone who helps a woman get an abortion, awarding them at least $10,000 per illegal abortion if they are successful. Read the New York Times article here.

OWRS (Older Women Remember and Speak Out) has developed ABORTION: TALK ABOUT IT, a series of short emails with reliable information that you can use to start conversations and support others doing the same. Share on social media. Forward to friends, family and co-workers. Ask them to go to OWRSpeakout.org and sign up.

We can’t change something we don’t talk about.OWRS Issue #9, July 2021