The Texas Republican Party is considering a platform that appears to support the death penalty for abortion providers and patients.
Texas delegates voted on a Platform 2024 at the state Republican Party convention on Saturday and plan to count votes by Wednesday to finalize their platform for next year. The proposal called for new legislation to solidify the ideology of fetal personhood into law, define abortion care as homicide, and criminalize in vitro fertilization, first reported by feminist writer Jessica Valenti.
The 50-page document also includes a number of other far-right ideas, such as proclaiming that gender-affirming care is “child abuse,” demanding that Christianity and the Bible be taught in public schools, and clarifying that Texas “retains the right to secede from the United States.”
The platform is seen more as a wish list than a binding document, but it is a critical reflection of how far right the Texas Republican Party has come in recent years.
The Republican Party platform calls for “equal protection of laws for all pre-born children from the moment of fertilization”, and later states that “abortion is not health care, it is murder”. The phrase “equal protection of the law” is used in the anti-choice movement to define abortion as homicide and criminalizes doctors and patients who perform abortions as murderers.
The Texas Republican Party did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Texas has executed more people than any other state in the country. It’s not a big leap for murder charges against a person the state believes murdered a child to result in the death penalty.
“The state of Texas is a leader in controlling people with its criminal justice system,” said Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel and legal director at Lawyering for Reproductive Justice: If/When/How. “If a fetus is considered a person, then it is considered a child, which is a vulnerable population. … The homicide of identified vulnerable people increases penalties.”
As Valenti highlights, South Carolina It is Georgia recently attempted to pass legislation called the Prenatal Equal Protection Act, which aimed to punish abortion as homicide under states’ criminal codes. Texas lawmakers have also proposed legislation — often referred to as “abolish abortion bills” — to erase the distinction between abortion and homicide.
Even within the anti-choice movement, prosecuting an abortion patient is a fringe belief. Most anti-abortion laws include exceptions to ensure that a woman is not criminalized for the outcome of her pregnancy (although many were arresteddespite these laws).
“I wish I could say the idea of the death penalty is a leap, but it’s not,” Diaz-Tello said, adding that for the anti-abortion movement in Texas, “it’s actually the next logical step.”
The platform also addressed two big abortion issues that are before the Supreme Court this session: the use of abortion pills It is life-saving abortion care in emergency medical situations. The document endorsed a ban on the “manufacture, import, sale, distribution and use of abortifacients,” which Texas currently does. It also states that they support Texas’ current medical emergency exception within the state’s near-total abortion ban, adding that while the exception’s language should not be changed, “implementation needs to be addressed” — likely referring to the dozens of women in Texas. who nearly died because they were refused life-saving abortion care.
