Editorial: Abortion bill is not that 'tough'
July 10, 2013
"The headlines scream: Texas House approves “tough” abortion restrictions — and the “tough” adjective comes from Fox News. In addition to “tough,” other words tossed around include “restrictive,” “contentious” and “sweeping.”
These descriptions are from House Bill 2 in the Texas House of Representatives, an abortion bill that was approved Wednesday by a 98-49 vote. State Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, is one of several co-authors of the bill, which now heads to the Senate — again.
One of the problems with the bill — at least according to those who support abortion with little or no restrictions — is that the legislation would ban abortions past 20 weeks of gestation.
However, according to the state of Texas, the statistics indicate the debate regarding this particular aspect of the bill is overblown.
According to the Texas Department of State Health Services (2010 is the most recent year for complete numbers), “only 1.4 percent of Texas resident abortions were performed at 17 weeks gestation or later, and only 0.5 percent were performed at 21 or more weeks gestation.”
That is out of a total of 77,592 induced abortions reported to the state in 2010, and this includes abortions obtained in other states by residents of Texas. In 2010, there were 386 abortions performed during week 21-25 of gestation and only 14 after the 26th week. A total of 55,851 abortions were performed at eight weeks of gestation or less, the largest category.
(On a related disturbing note, there were three abortions performed on females 11 years old or less, and one from Randall County for a female under the age of 15 — and all should agree just one abortion in this age group is too many — no matter the week of gestation.)
What these numbers reveal is that the vast majority of abortions in the state of Texas (at least according to data for the most current year available), would not have been impacted by the 20-week restriction included in HB 2 — 86.7 percent of abortions occurred at 10 weeks gestation or earlier.
From this perspective, HB 2 does not sound all that “tough” or “restrictive.”'
http://amarillo.com/opinion/editorial/2013-07-10/abortion-bill-not-tough
Go back to your gossip threads Neut and let us Christians fight the culture war.