Texas Has Become Ground Zero for Republicans' Efforts to Kill Contraception
Children under age 18 in the state of Texas must now obtain parental or guardian approval before being permitted birth control from federally funded clinics - even if the minor is already a parent.
Did anyone really believe the GOP and its so-called “Christian” right puppeteers would conclude its war on women’s reproductive freedoms after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer?
We weren’t fooled.
We knew the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling was just a foothold into the all-out assault on anything resembling women’s bodily autonomy.
As we begin another year, it appears the next casualty is female Texans under age 18.
Just as 2022 was concluding, Trump-appointed federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, former religious liberty lawyer, ruled the 1970 federal grant program known as Title X violated state law and parental rights.
The decision in the case Deanda v. Becerra states:
Texas law confers Plaintiff the right to consent to his children’s medical care and general standing to file suit for a violation of that right.
Children under age 18 in the state of Texas must now obtain parental or guardian approval before being permitted birth control from federally funded clinics — even if the minor is already a parent.
The now-repealed Title X encouraged family participation. This ruling mandates it, though, making it a crime to even practice birth control without explicit parental consent.
Not an abortion — birth control.
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), expressed in a statement:
Opponents of reproductive rights are not satisfied with overturning Roe — they want to take away birth control from young people, and restrict access to essential sexual and reproductive health care wherever they can. This ruling threatens the health and lives of young people, who may be stripped of their ability to access the health care they need to build healthy lives.
This is not the last attempt to restrict birth control access. PPFA will continue to fight for everyone’s ability to make decisions for themselves — and do everything we can so that Planned Parenthood health center patients receive the care they deserve.
As with overturning Roe, this latest move will impact teenagers from low-income and rural backgrounds the most since they are the ones who predominantly rely on free healthcare clinics.
Texas is already one of 24 states restricting minors’ access to contraception.
This latest restriction makes it the precedent other republican-majority states will likely follow.
It’s not like we weren’t warned.
US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his Dobbs concurring opinion the Supreme Court should next be committed to overturning the Griswold v. Connecticut decision protecting even adults’ right to birth control.
Thomas also stated homosexual sex permitted in the Lawrence v. Texas decision and the Obergefell v. Hodges decision protecting same-sex couple marriage should also be overturned.
Even though Congress passed H.R.8404 , the Respect for Marriage Act, codifying inter-racial and same-sex marriages into federal law, last month before adjourning for the year, does not mean every other right has been protected.
Nor does it mean republican-majority states beholden to wealthy right-wing evangelical special interest groups won’t exploit loopholes.
Now that republicans have reclaimed the House majority and are unambiguous in their objectives in making the 2024 presidential election all about Hunter Biden, “open borders,” transgender athletes, “wokeness,” burying any memory of the attempted coup against our government that their president orchestrated two years ago, and trying to impeach President Biden, republican legislatures are emboldened to rip away any semblance of dignity from women and LGBTQ+ Americans.
But listen very carefully to how they promote it.
They’ll sell it to low-information Americans by wrapping it in a filigree of “freedom,” “smaller government,” “anti-radical Socialist agenda,” all with enough racism, sexism, xenophobia, fear, conspiracy theory, and loathing to scare the Bejesus out of people so they’re distracted from how much the economic royalists are fleecing them.