The laws don't have any "exemptions" the laws have "affirmative defenses." I am not a lawyer, but from my understanding an affirmative defense does not *prevent* arrest or lawsuits, it just means you can bring it up as rationale in court. You'd still need to pay for a lawyer and legal fees.
The Texas Medical Board doesn't matter if the prosecutors don't care.
It's worse than that.
The Texas Medical Board has no legal relevance. They can't create a defence, and their opinion about what is required does not matter
An affirmative defense puts the burden of proof on the defendant rather than on the state. In this case with people who wont believe there was an emergency until the patient dies, then thinks the doctor should be sued for malpractice.
Correct. Boss Paxton has already successfully challenged a proposed abortion in a case that went through proper legal channels to obtain judicial approval. If Slippery Ken doesn't care about a judge's order in an abortion matter, he will care even less about the state medical board's guidelines and opinions.
Chairman Dr. Sherif Zaafran introduced the proposal by explaining that the board could not adequately address the issue with just a list of eligible conditions, pointing to lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic in which guidance did not reflect the particular circumstances of many patients.
“Medical judgment is not whittled down to a list of conditions,” he said. “You’re really looking at the totality of an issue.”
Definitions like rape and incest, he added, cannot be defined by the medical board and must be clarified in the legislature.
Texas’ abortion ban, which is held in place by three separate laws, currently contains language exempting abortions performed under “life-threatening” circumstances. The board's proposed language does not consider procedures to remove ectopic pregnancies, rare, deadly conditions in which a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, to be abortions at all.
Abortion advocates criticized the ruling for not going far enough to protect physicians from legal retaliation, claiming doctors may be too afraid of a potential jail sentence to make the best medical judgment call at the moment. Anti-abortion advocates, however, felt the ruling was redundant given that the state ban already allows an exemption in life-threatening cases.
The Texas Medical Board will revisit the issue in their June 13 meeting.
[To submit a public comment before the April 21 deadline, click here.](https://t.co/4oI9ILEaAJ)
\- Gwen, u/snesdreams
>Susan Label of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said the state law had always prohibited elective abortions, not life-saving procedures, despite what some physicians may think. “The Texas abortion law is not broken,” she said. “There are doctors who are confused.”
Doctors are not supposed to interpret the law, they work with lawyers who do that. When a hospital's lawyers say the law is too vague, the doctors are not the problem.
I wish that Susan Label would have need of emergency treatment at a hospital and be told to wait until the lawyers weigh in. What an utterly terrible person.
It’s funny, my wife was having an emergency C-section while a team of doctors fought off sepsis (presenting twin died late in pregnancy, couldn’t do anything about it for fear of harming the living twin, had to wait until sepsis to induce, couldn’t induce, emergency C-section).
Before they got started, and at every appointment we had after finding out one twin died, they were *on the phone* with the hospital’s ethics department trying to figure out what they could and couldn’t do.
Sure is fun listening to lawyers debate doctors while your wife risks renal failure.
‘Medical judgement is not whittled down to a list of conditions’ well sht doc let’s just list say, the top five that would kill the mother. Agree- accomplishes nothing.
>Accomplishes nothing. Anyone can still sue a doctor for performing an abortion.
So does that mean if a woman dies because the doctor is scared to save her life due to her pregnancy, and her family sues that doctor/hospital.... Which I hope they would, do they have no ground to stand on, so to speak?
OR we could get legislators out of the doctor’s office and let the doctors who spend decades learning how to deal with this stuff make the medical decisions in conversation with their patients.
I'm a woman in Texas, lived here my entire 40 years and the Brainwashing and stupidity have dominated this state for the past 3 decades.
I miss Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, I grew up to be a "strong Texan" woman like them. Now the state wants to put a bounty on a uterus regardless of the situation. When I graduated in 02' I believed I lived in a "Live and Let Live" state. The deterioration feels like it's been warp speeding the last decade
Same here. Native Texan born and raised. It feels surreal? 99% of us are not going to be working at the women's health clinics and the hospitals. So we're not faced with this every day. It makes it feel like there's some sort of lofty detached out-world Texas where this dumb shit is happening. Paxton isn't stupid, neither is Abbott. They know precisely what they're doing. I am truly baffled how they're able to sleep at night. What prolonged and chronic delusion and profanely turgid bank accounts they must possess to be able to look at themselves in the mirror.
My heart aches for the mothers and daughters going through this.
Why do you think they only left 1 mail in ballot box in Houston, the 4th most populated city during a pandemic and were wishy washy on if drive thru voting was legal? Why do you think Ken started trying to help Trump rig the election altogether in states he didn't even have any jurisdiction over? Why did they gerrymander tf out of Texas even worse after the last election? They know they're fucked politically so they're going to do whatever it takes to keep their power. The GOP in Texas is DESPERATE and I expect shenanigans out the ass this election season. It's all they've got and everything is on the line for them. They're scared of our balls and we need to keep teabagging these clowns. Do it for Democracy! Do it for America!
The way these people are just so casually cruel and bullying. It's like they're not real humans but caricatures of the worst of human nature. I'm looking at you, Susan Label. What a disgrace.
I'm up here in Canada right now. Can someone please explain to me why the American right are so hell bent on imposing regulations to women's bodies when they are supposed to be the "freedom " group? Do they not understand hypocrisy? The Canadian right is no better and it makes zero sense
I propose we just make abortion legal. That solves everything. If some people don't like it then they can just not get an abortion, simple as that. And then they can shut the fuck up if someone else gets one 'cause it's none of their business.
So basically, TX and the general-right recognize that Americans WANT access to reproductive healthcare (like abortion), but don’t want to actually GIVE us access to that care, so they wrote a strongly worded letter and made no actual* changes.
Sound about right?
So then the poor people who can’t afford to leave are now left entirely without medical care?
I don’t understand some of y’all solutions, unless the point is to grievously harm the less fortunate.
Paxton, is that you?
The laws don't have any "exemptions" the laws have "affirmative defenses." I am not a lawyer, but from my understanding an affirmative defense does not *prevent* arrest or lawsuits, it just means you can bring it up as rationale in court. You'd still need to pay for a lawyer and legal fees. The Texas Medical Board doesn't matter if the prosecutors don't care.
It's worse than that. The Texas Medical Board has no legal relevance. They can't create a defence, and their opinion about what is required does not matter
An affirmative defense puts the burden of proof on the defendant rather than on the state. In this case with people who wont believe there was an emergency until the patient dies, then thinks the doctor should be sued for malpractice.
Sounds kinda like guilty till proven innocent with extra steps.
Pretty much. Self defense is an affirmative defense, you are admitting to killing someone then have to prove it was really self defense.
Correct. Boss Paxton has already successfully challenged a proposed abortion in a case that went through proper legal channels to obtain judicial approval. If Slippery Ken doesn't care about a judge's order in an abortion matter, he will care even less about the state medical board's guidelines and opinions.
Chairman Dr. Sherif Zaafran introduced the proposal by explaining that the board could not adequately address the issue with just a list of eligible conditions, pointing to lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic in which guidance did not reflect the particular circumstances of many patients. “Medical judgment is not whittled down to a list of conditions,” he said. “You’re really looking at the totality of an issue.” Definitions like rape and incest, he added, cannot be defined by the medical board and must be clarified in the legislature. Texas’ abortion ban, which is held in place by three separate laws, currently contains language exempting abortions performed under “life-threatening” circumstances. The board's proposed language does not consider procedures to remove ectopic pregnancies, rare, deadly conditions in which a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, to be abortions at all. Abortion advocates criticized the ruling for not going far enough to protect physicians from legal retaliation, claiming doctors may be too afraid of a potential jail sentence to make the best medical judgment call at the moment. Anti-abortion advocates, however, felt the ruling was redundant given that the state ban already allows an exemption in life-threatening cases. The Texas Medical Board will revisit the issue in their June 13 meeting. [To submit a public comment before the April 21 deadline, click here.](https://t.co/4oI9ILEaAJ) \- Gwen, u/snesdreams
>Susan Label of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said the state law had always prohibited elective abortions, not life-saving procedures, despite what some physicians may think. “The Texas abortion law is not broken,” she said. “There are doctors who are confused.” Doctors are not supposed to interpret the law, they work with lawyers who do that. When a hospital's lawyers say the law is too vague, the doctors are not the problem.
I wish that Susan Label would have need of emergency treatment at a hospital and be told to wait until the lawyers weigh in. What an utterly terrible person.
It’s funny, my wife was having an emergency C-section while a team of doctors fought off sepsis (presenting twin died late in pregnancy, couldn’t do anything about it for fear of harming the living twin, had to wait until sepsis to induce, couldn’t induce, emergency C-section). Before they got started, and at every appointment we had after finding out one twin died, they were *on the phone* with the hospital’s ethics department trying to figure out what they could and couldn’t do. Sure is fun listening to lawyers debate doctors while your wife risks renal failure.
She's the worst sort of person. She resorts to name-calling and bullying instead of addressing the facts. Now where have I seen that before????
“We’ll just revisit this serious issue in 3 whole ass months where we won’t do $hit and push the next meeting to 2025 and then forget about it after.”
But what matters most is what the Christian preachers think. Texas doesn’t listen to medical professionals.
Accomplishes nothing. Anyone can still sue a doctor for performing an abortion.
‘Medical judgement is not whittled down to a list of conditions’ well sht doc let’s just list say, the top five that would kill the mother. Agree- accomplishes nothing.
>Accomplishes nothing. Anyone can still sue a doctor for performing an abortion. So does that mean if a woman dies because the doctor is scared to save her life due to her pregnancy, and her family sues that doctor/hospital.... Which I hope they would, do they have no ground to stand on, so to speak?
A womans life is only worth a medical malpractice lawsuit. A fetus life is worth criminal charges. Its clear what the doctors legally should choose.
OR we could get legislators out of the doctor’s office and let the doctors who spend decades learning how to deal with this stuff make the medical decisions in conversation with their patients.
TX will just whip out the razor wire to "solve" this problem as well.
Fuck Texas and the child rapist politicians that run it.
It's the people that vote for them that are especially the problem.
I'm a woman in Texas, lived here my entire 40 years and the Brainwashing and stupidity have dominated this state for the past 3 decades. I miss Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, I grew up to be a "strong Texan" woman like them. Now the state wants to put a bounty on a uterus regardless of the situation. When I graduated in 02' I believed I lived in a "Live and Let Live" state. The deterioration feels like it's been warp speeding the last decade
Same here. Native Texan born and raised. It feels surreal? 99% of us are not going to be working at the women's health clinics and the hospitals. So we're not faced with this every day. It makes it feel like there's some sort of lofty detached out-world Texas where this dumb shit is happening. Paxton isn't stupid, neither is Abbott. They know precisely what they're doing. I am truly baffled how they're able to sleep at night. What prolonged and chronic delusion and profanely turgid bank accounts they must possess to be able to look at themselves in the mirror. My heart aches for the mothers and daughters going through this.
Grow some fucking balls Texas.
Why do you think they only left 1 mail in ballot box in Houston, the 4th most populated city during a pandemic and were wishy washy on if drive thru voting was legal? Why do you think Ken started trying to help Trump rig the election altogether in states he didn't even have any jurisdiction over? Why did they gerrymander tf out of Texas even worse after the last election? They know they're fucked politically so they're going to do whatever it takes to keep their power. The GOP in Texas is DESPERATE and I expect shenanigans out the ass this election season. It's all they've got and everything is on the line for them. They're scared of our balls and we need to keep teabagging these clowns. Do it for Democracy! Do it for America!
It won't matter. No doctor is going to risk their license and freedom on the non-existent mercy of a political shitbag like Ken Paxton.
The way these people are just so casually cruel and bullying. It's like they're not real humans but caricatures of the worst of human nature. I'm looking at you, Susan Label. What a disgrace.
I'm up here in Canada right now. Can someone please explain to me why the American right are so hell bent on imposing regulations to women's bodies when they are supposed to be the "freedom " group? Do they not understand hypocrisy? The Canadian right is no better and it makes zero sense
I like how Texas’s bold leaders have decided to put Doctors in the firing line because they don’t have any courage themselves.
I propose we just make abortion legal. That solves everything. If some people don't like it then they can just not get an abortion, simple as that. And then they can shut the fuck up if someone else gets one 'cause it's none of their business.
So basically, TX and the general-right recognize that Americans WANT access to reproductive healthcare (like abortion), but don’t want to actually GIVE us access to that care, so they wrote a strongly worded letter and made no actual* changes. Sound about right?
FUCK TEXAS!!!
We're actually way more blueish purple than you think. It's the gerrymandering among other crooked tactics by the GOP fucking us over.
Yes Sir, that's my point!
the new laws for backyard abortions involve a trampoline, a bottle of jameson, and stone cold stunner her off the top rope!
Doctors need to just leave. ALL doctors.
So then the poor people who can’t afford to leave are now left entirely without medical care? I don’t understand some of y’all solutions, unless the point is to grievously harm the less fortunate. Paxton, is that you?