Texas Alliance for Life points to the latest Induced Termination of Pregnancy (ITOP) report from Texas Health and Human Services, which shows that doctors in Texas have performed 119 abortions to save pregnant women’s lives or health under the medical emergency exception of Texas pro-life laws during the first 24 months after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision.

The latest numbers released today show that, in June 2024, three such abortions were reported. To date, no doctor has been prosecuted, sued, or sanctioned for any of those abortions, providing clear evidence that Texas’ pro-life laws are allowing physicians to perform abortions to protect women’s lives and health.

Despite these facts, ProPublica recently published misleading articles falsely attributing the tragic deaths of Josseli Barnica in 2021 and Nevaeh Crain in 2023 to Texas’ pro-life laws. Texas Alliance for Life strongly refutes these claims, arguing that such narratives promote fear and misinformation rather than the truth, undermining women’s health and safety.

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“Texas laws explicitly allow doctors to perform abortions when a mother’s life or health is at risk,” said Texas Alliance for Life Communications Director Amy O’Donnell. “The data from Texas Health and Human Services proves that physicians are providing abortions to save women’s lives when medically necessary. ProPublica is attempting to place blame where it doesn’t belong. Josseli’s and Nevaeh’s deaths were preventable, and Texas law allowed their physicians to exercise their reasonable medical judgment to perform life-saving abortions before the threat to their lives became imminent.”

“Abortion advocates and certain media outlets like ProPublica continue to stoke fear with false claims,” O’Donnell continued. “This fear-mongering only creates dangerous confusion for patients and providers, despite the clarity of what Texas laws allow, and women’s lives, fertility, and future well-being are unnecessarily put at risk.”

Texas Alliance for Life calls on the media to correct inaccuracies and commit to reporting the truth about Texas pro-life laws and their positive impact on women’s health.

Background:

• Texas pro-life laws explicitly allow life-saving abortions when a mother’s life or health is at risk. In Barnica’s case, a 17-week incomplete miscarriage created a clear medical emergency. The American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs released a statement saying, “Josseli Barnaca was in the middle of a spontaneous & inevitable miscarriage/delivery. TX law would have allowed her physicians to expedite her delivery because it was imminent. Pro-life laws across this country allowed this before & after the Dobbs opinion & TX abortion law.” Physicians should have provided prompt care to prevent a fatal outcome, and Texas law allowed it.

• Shortly after the 2022 Dobbs decision, Texas’ Human Life Protection Act (HB 1280) went into effect, protecting the lives of unborn children beginning at conception. That law has an exception for medically necessary abortions when, in the “reasonable medical judgment” of the physician, the pregnancy causes “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.”

• The Texas Medical Board, which licenses and regulates physicians, addressed the life-of-the-mother medical exceptions for that and all Texas pro-life laws in the latest rule-making guidance issued to physicians. The rules released in June 2024 explained that the threat to the mother’s life or health does not have to be imminent, a point which Texas Alliance for Life advocated for in the rule-making process as participating stakeholders.

• On May 31, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court, in Zurawski v. Texas, recently determined that the exception in the Texas Human Life Protection Act is both constitutional and clear. Physicians may use “reasonable medical judgment” to determine whether a pregnancy requires a medically necessary abortion.