Mandatory Adoption Seminars: A Taste of Anti-Abortion Fights to Come in 2015
Molly Redden reveals the next front in the GOP war on women.
Texas lawmakers have already walloped abortion access with 24-hour mandatory waiting periods and onerous rules that shut down almost half of the state’s clinics. But one anti-abortion lawmaker is gearing up for more. Although the legislature isn’t in session this year, State Sen. Ed Lucio (D) is promising to introduce a bill for 2015 that would force women to undergo an hour-long adoption seminar before obtaining an abortion.
Lucio declined through a spokesman to be interviewed for this article. But a similar bill he offered in 2013 provides clues about the forthcoming legislation. That bill instructed the Health and Human Services Commission to create an educational course about adoption of up to three hours. Women would have to take the course, for free, online or in person, and submit a “certificate of completion” to the physician performing the abortion. The bill contained an exception for women who became pregnant as the result of rape or incest or required an abortion for medical reasons.
“It is my hope that, when presented with more information on adoption resources and services available, more pregnancies can be carried to term,” Lucio told the San Antonio Express-News.
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