TEXANS COULD SUE ABORTION PILL PROVIDERS UNDER BILL

(AUSTIN) — Any Texan would be permitted to bring a lawsuit against a manufacturer or a distributor of abortion-inducing medication under a bill considered by the Senate State Affairs Committee on Monday. This is the same mechanism that allowed Texas’ 2021 “Heartbeat Bill”, which effectively banned abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, to survive judicial scrutiny. “That was the first pro-life law in 50 years that the US Supreme Court allowed to stand,” said Mineola Senator Bryan Hughes, who carried that bill two sessions ago. He’s also carrying SB 6, which would use the same cause of action to dissuade people and companies in abortion-legal states from supplying the drugs to women in Texas. “It goes directly to the pocketbooks of these companies that are making and sending the pills to Texas,” said Hughes.

SB 6, by Mineola Senator Bryan Hughes, would allow private citizens in Texas to file suit against people or companies that manufacture or distribute abortion-inducing pills in the state.

Abortion has been illegal in Texas since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, allowing states to determine their own policy on the issue. The bill would not apply to legal uses of these drugs, known as abortifacients, which can be indicated in some medically-necessary abortions and have other, non-abortive applications. It would permit a person in Texas to bring suit against a company or a person that makes or distributes these drugs to individuals in the state. Damages in a successful suit could be no less than $100,000.

Hughes told members that these drugs can have severe complications for women and that the standards for use have declined over time such that women end up taking the drugs and inducing abortion alone. In the past, he said, these drugs required a prescription, doctor supervision, and follow-up care, but the FDA has relaxed standards over time. Data from insurance claims, said Hughes, shows that these pills can have more complications than surgical abortions. Hughes also wanted to make clear that the bill does not create any legal peril, criminal or civil, for women who buy or use these pills. “The moms are victims here,” said Hughes. “What we will go after with SB 6 is the manufacturers and the distributors of these drugs that are making them for the purpose of illegal abortions.” A similar bill passed the Senate during the regular session but died in the House.

The committee also considered a bill that would make it easier for victims of human trafficking to argue they were forced to commit crimes under duress. “Traffickers do so as a form of control,” said Flower Mound Senator Tan Parker. “Once they have forced their victim to commit a crime, they hold that crime over their head to dissuade seeking help from law enforcement.” While it is a defense to prosecution to claim that illegal actions were performed under duress, state law only recognizes situations in which a person faces immediate risk of death or serious bodily injury. “While this is the correct standard in the vast majority of cases, existing law ignores the complicated and elongated context of exploitation that victims of human trafficking can face,” said Parker. Traffickers use emotional, financial, or psychological tactics to control victims. “Because these tactics do not always involve immediate physical violence, many victims are unfairly denied the ability to argue duress when charged with crimes they were compelled to commit,” said Parker. His bill, SB 10, would create a special definition of duress for human trafficking victims, allowing them to argue their actions were forced through fraud or coercion absent threat of immediate violence.

A similar bill, SB 1278 also by Parker, was vetoed by Governor Greg Abbott because he worried it would allow trafficking victims - or those claiming to be - to use this defense for any offense, even crimes like murder or kidnapping. SB 10 would not allow for the use of the expanded definition of duress in cases involving the most serious felony offenses, known as “3G offenses” for their location in the Texas criminal code.

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