Texas Democrats are vowing to ease some of the nation’s strictest abortion restrictions after they take over most statewide offices in January for the first time in decades.
Laws passed over the past five years have made it nearly impossible to terminate a pregnancy legally in the Lone Star State, despite medical exceptions existing in theory.
The state shuttered all elective abortion clinics, prosecuted unlicensed providers and filed federal lawsuits asking the Trump administration to restrict abortion pills — cementing its position at the vanguard of states seeking to curb the procedure.
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Democratic Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson declared after winning this month’s election that he will stop suing telehealth abortion providers who ship pills from other states. That marks a sharp reversal from his Republican predecessor, Ken Paxton, who lost his race to become a U.S. senator.
Democrats also won all four Texas Supreme Court seats on this month’s midterm ballot. That narrows the GOP to a 5-4 advantage that could become crucial to split rulings in lawsuits challenging the state’s restrictions.
Meanwhile, Democratic Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa has called for ending Texas’ near-total abortion ban and restoring access — a steeper challenge, given that Republicans still control the state Senate.
State Democratic lawmakers pre-filed several bills this week that would repeal the state’s pro-life laws, shutter pro-life pregnancy resource centers and end funding for programs promoting alternatives to abortion in the next legislative session.
“The Democrats do have a majority, but some of these laws passed with bipartisan support, so I would hope they don’t have the votes to repeal them,” said Mary Elizabeth Castle, director of government relations at Texas Values, a conservative Christian advocacy group based in Austin. “It’s still going to be a long road.”
Mark Lee Dickson, director of Right to Life Across Texas, noted that Democratic control of the House and the governor’s office will freeze years of pro-life victories.
But he argued that midterm voters do not support lawmakers formally repealing existing restrictions.
“This was not a referendum on abortion,” Mr. Dickson said. “On the campaign trail, many of the Democrats avoided speaking about abortion, unless they were speaking in areas with strong pro-abortion support.”
Fox News found that 58% of roughly 5,100 Texas midterm voters it surveyed said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, but that living costs and the Iran war also mattered.
Newsweek reported that only 2% of likely Texas voters named abortion their most important issue in a September-October poll.
“I would not claim that every Democratic voter cast a ballot for the same reason,” said Juven Jacob, a Houston native and former presidential appointee in the Biden-Harris administration. “But these victories give Democrats a chance to show what protecting personal freedom looks like in people’s lives.”
It could take Democrats years to make a dent in the state’s laws.
The Texas Heartbeat Act restricted most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in October 2021, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law. It allows private citizens to sue doctors who violate it.
A more sweeping Texas ban on abortions from the moment of conception took effect in August 2022 — triggered by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ruling returning jurisdiction to the states two months earlier.
“The incoming attorney general can decline to enforce various abortion laws, and dismiss many pending cases,” said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. “Texas still has the heartbeat law, which allows private citizens to bring suit.”
Texas officials reported fewer abortions after both laws took effect. But abortions still increased nationally, fueled by mail-order pills crossing state lines to become an increasing majority of unreported pregnancy terminations.
In recent years, Mr. Paxton prosecuted unlicensed abortion clinics in the Houston area and sued to stop the flow of mail-order pills.
Mary Ziegler, a leading historian of the legal abortion debate, predicted that surgical abortions will become more common in the state after Mr. Johnson ends the threat of legal action.
“I think that because Paxton was so involved in prosecutions, there was a chilling effect on doctors, and you could see more use of medical exceptions for abortions with Democrats in office,” said Ms. Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis.
“It’s a really big deal because Texas was the North Star for pro-life legislation after Dobbs,” she said. “All of that now goes away.”
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