Like the Texas Legislature meets Tuesday in Austin for the first day of the 2025 legislative session, a number of anti-abortion bills have already been introduced, largely aimed at stopping the flow of abortion pills into the state.
The bills are designed to end what is widely seen as a loophole in abortion bans across the country, as pills have helped soften the impact of the bans now prevalent in the US. Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion organization, has had a hand in drafting a number of bills and is encouraging men to sue people who have supported their partners’ abortions.
“There has been no real accountability when it comes to access to abortion pills, so we are going to try different approaches to give Texans more tools to end this deadly trend,” said John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life.
Texas was the first state in the US to ban most abortions in recent years, passing a six-week ban that went into effect months before the fall of Roe v Wade. After the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, the state passed a law total ban who threatens doctors with life sentences. Texas often serves as a laboratory for anti-abortion bills and strategies used by other Republican-led states replicate later.
While a Texas law Sending abortion pills to residents by post is already punishable, but it is difficult to enforce. An average of 2,800 abortions per month are still obtained in Texas through so-called shield laws passed in some blue states to provide protection for health care providers who prescribe drugs to women in states with bans. Other abortions are performed in-house using pills delivered through underground networks. These channels have been sources of constant information frustration for anti-abortion activists who see the mail order route as a final loophole that needs to be closed.
Texas Republicans introduced several bills in advance to target pills. A would make it a “deceptive business practice” to mail pills after an in-person exam without a prescription from a local doctor. Similar to a measure in Louisiana that doctors warn will delay life-saving care. another would reclassify abortion drugs as dangerous “controlled substances.”
Yet another bill would allow citizens to file lawsuits that force internet service providers to block websites that host abortion funds — organizations that help people seeking abortions travel out of state — or provide information about obtaining abortion pills. The bill specifically names groups that offer abortion medications by mail, including Aid Access, Plan C and Hey Jane.
That bill aims to take advantage of a new enforcement mechanism included in the 2021 ban — which Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor called a “private bounty hunter scheme” — that allowed citizens to sue anyone they suspected of facilitating an abortion. “It also raises the issue of Texas potentially projecting its power beyond state lines to regulate speech about abortion, and that could get very complicated,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California-Davis and historian of abortion rights.
Emboldened by the new Trump administration, anti-abortion advocates in Texas are optimistic their plans will become reality after a relatively quiet session on abortion in 2023. But even if some bills pass, they are likely to face lawsuits.
“Some of these efforts to block out-of-state abortion pills by mail will require the courts to first resolve the issue of cross-border legal conflicts,” Ziegler said. “Whose state laws will apply in these scenarios? And that gets messy.”
Texas Right to Life says blocking residents from receiving abortion-inducing drugs is the group’s top priority this year. The influential group also encourages men to file wrongful death lawsuits against organizations and doctors who help facilitate their partners’ abortions. One such lawsuit was filed in March 2023 by Texas resident Marcus Silva against his ex-wife’s friends for allegedly assisting in her medication abortion. Silva quietly dropped the case in October.
The group says it is working with government departments, “abortion recovery groups” and crisis pregnancy centers across the state to find plaintiffs and hopes to file the first such lawsuit by February.
“Several men in Texas who are fathers of abortion victims are very interested in holding these individuals accountable. And we are working to make that happen,” Seago said. “The ultimate goal is to expose these activists and send a message that they will be held accountable to stop them from operating.”
In December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor for allegedly sending abortion pills to a Texas woman, sparking a battle that tested the durability of the shield laws.
This session, Paxton could get a boost in his crusade to criminalize abortion with a new bill, HB 1004which would give the AG the authority to unilaterally prosecute abortion-related crimes.
Meanwhile, Democrats have introduced bills to help doctors navigate the law, by clarifying the medical exceptions to the state’s abortion ban and allowing them to use their laws. best medical judgment in the treatment of patients. They have also proposed measures to cut out exceptions to rape and incest in Texas abortion law.
Neither bill is expected to pass as the Legislature is under Republican control.