Sunday, June 30, 2013

Dewhurst Announces Preparations for Texas Second Special Session

If you have a pulse and follow politics in Texas, you know by now that the second Special Session begins Monday afternoon at 2:00pm.  The first item on the agenda will be called SB1 and it will be the failed SB5 re-introduced.  There are two other bills that will be part of the second Special Session but they both have solid bi-partisan support, unlike the newly named SB1.  Therefore, to help in the strategy to and not allow a repeat of the end of the first Special Session, SB1 will be the pro-life omnibus bill and it will be filed Monday.  The bills will most likely be heard on the floor July 8 and 9.

I heard about this on a conference call Sunday afternoon with Lt Gov Dewhurst and frankly, I was happy to hear that plans were in the works to avoid the problems presented in the last special session.

We see Texas Senator being lauded in the media by the media - all of whom have a real agenda to report only like-minded abortion stances in a professional, unbiased way - and we also now know that the mob chaos that broke out at the end of session last Tuesday night was arranged by "international Socialist groups", as Lt Gov Dewhurst said.  Even the New York Times admits groups like Planned Parenthood were surprised to have other outside professional agitators, the likes of the Occupy groups included.  

This time around, however, the Lt Governor is working with DPS and planning for a strong security presence. He encouraged those on the conference call to avoid being dragged into arguments, should the listeners be in Austin during the session.  "They love to provoke." 

The points of the bill missed by the reporting by the national media because the narrative that abortion will be illegal in Texas is more explosive is that this bill protects the health of women seeking abortion and honors the latest research that fetal pain is felt at five months.  Currently the law allows abortion up to six months in Roe v Wade.  Dewhurst thinks the Texas bill will survive Constitutional challenges with the fetal pain language inclusion.  

What needs to be stressed as the bill moves forward is that regulations will be put in place to prevent hideous abuses like with the Gosnell infanticide horrors and Houston's own butcher stories.  Women would go to surgical clinic settings instead of those stand alone storefronts that are unwilling or unable to make the changes.  This protects the lives of women, it doesn't deny rights.  

"At the end of the day, we ought to be treating all clinics the same whether taking out tonsils or performing abortions", said Dewhurst.

These are a few points released by Lt Gov Dewhurst after the conference call:
Our pro-life bill, SB 1, is about protecting the health of Texas women and the preborn.

It breaks my heart that over 70,000 women have abortions in Texas each year.  Based on medical journals, roughly 1 in 20 women experience complications during the surgical procedure, meaning more than 2,500 Texas women are at risk in a given year.

Shouldn’t all clinics meet the same medical standards, whether they are removing a child’s tonsils, or performing an abortion?

If abortion facility owners won't spend a portion of their ill-gotten profits on treating women safely, they should be shut down.

In addition, this bill lowers the abortion threshold from 6 months to 5 months, which will save 350-400 Texas babies a year.

When we stand for life, we stand for Texas women and their babies!
One Republican legislator has volunteer his office to be used as a peaceful spot for bloggers and observers to come and charge up electronic devices or write for blogs.  Others will follow.  

Additional police has been called in for crowd control, though Dewhurst did not want to go into the numbers.  Though they thought they had an adequate number of officers last Tuesday, the fact that 7,000 people came into the Capitol overwhelmed them. Dewhurst says that will not happen this time.  He likened the mob scene to that of the disruptions at the capitol in Wisconsin.  Dewhurst said that though stairwells were full of protesters Tuesday night, "that will not happen again" and that there will be "crowd control outside and inside." He will read a statement on the rules of strict enforcement often, so that the observers will be well informed. "We will not have international Socialist movements interrupt our legislature." 

Politics, Texas style.



2 comments:

Esther said...

If its about making surgery safer, why do the new requirements apply to clinics offering only non-surgical abortions?

Anonymous said...

the bill requires all abortion facilities meet this requirement