Abortion: Legislative Update

We* had our 36th Annual Conference of the Professions here in Dallas yesterday. The official title was "Governmental conflict with standards and professional judgment: Case studies in Texas." Our keynote speaker -- Prof. David Orentlicher, M.D., J.D. -- was great, as were our panelists from the clergy, law, and medicine -- Dr. Charles Brown, TAMU School of Medicine; Shelly Skeen, JD – Southern Regional Director, Lambda Legal; and Rev. Danielle Ayers, Pastor of Justice, Friendship-west -- and our panel moderator, Rev. George Mason, pastor emeritus of Wilshire Baptist Church & founder of Faith Commons.

It didn't take a lot of imagination to read our open-ended title and conclude that abortion and gender-affirming care would figure prominently in the discussion. We did cover a number of other subjects, but these two topics dominated the discussion.

Coincidentally, today's Washington Post ran an article on the abortion bans around the country, with a focus on the vague language state legislatures use to describe exceptions to the ban, e.g.:

(Click on images to enlarge.)

Predictably, that vague language leaves physicians and hospital guessing about whether any particular patient's condition qualifies for termination of her pregnancy. The Conference explored this effect in some detail yesterday. If you missed it, this article is a very good guide to the issue.

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*The organizers of the Conference are:  SMU Dedman School of Law, the Dallas County Medical Society, the Dallas Bar Association, the SMU Perkins School of Theology, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Faith Commons, and SMU’s Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility.