A New Texas Bill Seeks to Ban Abortion Pill Websites Statewide

A Texas Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill that would compel internet providers in the state to block websites that sell or provide information on how to obtain abortion pills.

The Women and Child Safety Act, which was introduced late last week, would require that websites such as Plan C and Aid Access be cut off. It would also allow individuals to bring civil lawsuits against the people who maintain such sites. Abortion funds and their staffers could face criminal penalties for helping someone get an abortion even if they travel out of state, as could individuals who manufacture and distribute abortion pills in Texas or who provide information on how to get the drugs.

Washington Post reporter Caroline Kitchener noted that this bill appears to be the first in the United States to go after online abortion pill providers, which are considered a crucial resource in maintaining widespread access to safe abortions.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Texas has banned abortion after six weeks, before many people know they are pregnant. There are no exceptions for rape or incest, and only a few to save the life of the pregnant person. Individuals are also allowed to sue anyone who provides abortion care or helps someone get an abortion, in what’s known as the state’s chilling vigilante law.

Medication abortions, which consist of taking the two drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, make up more than half of all abortions in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Taking away access to the pills would have a severe negative impact on people’s health and ability to get care.

Texas has been a front-runner in cracking down on abortion rights and access, even before the nationwide right to the procedure was rolled back. The increasingly restrictive laws run counter to what most state residents actually want too: A study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 57 percent of Texans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

It’s deeply ironic that Texas’s latest bill is called the Women and Child Safety Act, considering that decreasing abortion access is actually detrimental to people’s health. This and other bills being introduced in state legislatures will only serve to hurt the people they claim to want to protect.

Georgia, Kentucky, and Alabama are all considering bills that would classify abortion as homicide, while South Carolina representatives introduced a bill that would make abortion punishable by the death penalty.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, known for always acting appropriately and civilly, decried the loss of “respect” for others with different political views after being yelled at in a restaurant.

The Georgia representative wrote on Twitter Monday night that two people screamed at her and her staff while they were out to dinner. She did not say what the people were screaming about nor what restaurant it was.

“People used to respect others even if they had different views,” Greene tweeted. “But not anymore. Our country is gone.”

Greene, of course, does not really have a leg to stand on when it comes to lecturing others on respect. She heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address to the point that even her new ally Kevin McCarthy appeared to shush her.

Before she was elected to Congress, Greene came to Washington, D.C., and harassed gun control advocate and school shooting survivor David Hogg in 2019, peppering him with conspiracy theories and taunts. The year before, she began repeatedly suggesting executing prominent Democratic lawmakers.

Greene doesn’t just hold “different” political views, but views that actively seek to suppress human rights. Just Monday night, she was one of two representatives to vote against a resolution mourning the loss of life in Turkey and Syria due to the recent earthquakes and condemning the Assad regime in Syria for exploiting the disaster to evade accountability.

She has spread conspiracy theories and antisemitic, homophobic, and transphobic rhetoric. Last week, she called for a “national divorce,” by which she really meant installing a white supremacist, single-party authoritarian government.

Republicans have become notorious for not being able to handle what they dish out. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was livid when comedian Michelle Wolf said at the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Dinner that the then-White House press secretary “burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye.” Sanders was also upset that same year when she went to dinner at a restaurant in Virginia called The Red Hen and the owner asked her to leave.

“Faced with the prospect of serving a fine meal to a person whose actions in the service of our country we felt violated basic standards of humanity, we balked. We couldn’t do it,” the owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, said in a 2019 op-ed in The Washington Post. Wilkinson said her request was discreet and polite, and Sanders responded in kind. But the next day, Sanders called the restaurant out by name on Twitter.

Civility, of course, swings both ways. After Sanders tweet, Wilkinson said that she and her staff had their personal information published online and were inundated with hate mail. The restaurant phone line was hacked, the Yelp profile was flooded with fake bad reviews, and people made reservations and never showed up.

Another restaurant called Red Hen, an unaffiliated business in Washington, D.C., also became the target of similar vitriol after Sanders supporters mixed up the two establishments. Sanders is now the governor of Arkansas.

Progressive Democratic Representatives Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania and Ro Khanna of California have challenged the rest of Congress to put their actions where their words are. On Tuesday, the duo introduced the Decreasing Emergency Railroad Accident Instances Locally (DERAIL) Act to tighten rail safety regulations by expanding the definition of what classifies as a “high-hazard flammable train,” or HHFT.

“For too long, railroads have prioritized profit ahead of public safety and their workers,” Deluzio said in a statement. “And it is time to regulate the railroads.”

The bill would deem trains carrying so-called Class 2 flammable gases, such as vinyl chloride, to qualify for HHFT classification, and would give the transportation secretary the authority to designate other materials warranting classification as well. The Department of Transportation currently considers an HHFT to be a train carrying hazardous materials in at least 20 consecutive cars, or 35 cars total. The bill would lower that threshold to at least one railcar carrying a Class 3 flammable liquid or Class 2 flammable gas, or again, any other material the secretary may deem especially hazardous.

The first bill on the matter introduced this Congress is also the first of Deluzio’s career.

In expanding the definition of what qualifies as a high-hazard flammable train, Congress would also expand which trains warrant higher safety standards. After the disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, earlier this month, there has been a lot of focus on former President Donald Trump’s decision to overturn an Obama-era rule that mandated updated electronic braking systems for trains carrying hazardous materials. In reality, however, the Obama-era rule would not have applied to the train in East Palestine, as Obama regulators acquiesced to lobbying interests that sought to limit the definition of HHFTs. Had the East Palestine train had updated brakes, it might have been able to stop much quicker and cause less damage.

With Deluzio and Khanna’s bill, those errors would be remedied; the bill would ensure trains like the one in East Palestine would be held to higher safety standards and qualify for changes like updated rail cars and braking equipment, as well as stronger audits and cargo reporting. It would be an essential foundation before any of the necessary reforms to hopefully follow. The bill also pushes for stronger information-sharing, requiring carriers to report to the National Response Center and state, local, and tribal officials within 24 hours after a train carrying toxic chemicals derails.

Members of both parties have expressed concern for the train derailment; while they rightly call on the federal government to act, they now also have the chance to take action themselves. Deluzio and Khanna’s bill holds necessary provisions for an actually coherent regulatory framework to oversee the rail industry. So if Congress is going to do anything, it starts with this bill.

“This is a moment where we need political leaders from all parties and from across the country to speak out loudly for better safety regulations and to acknowledge what so many Americans are going through,” said Khanna.

Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch admitted he knew his organization was spreading lies about the 2020 election results in a deposition for a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems made public Monday.

Dominion sued Fox News Networks and parent company Fox Corp in 2021 for $1.6 billion for defamation. The electronic voting system company accused the television network of spreading lies that Dominion machines were used to rig the 2020 election against Donald Trump.

Court documents released Monday revealed that not only did Murdoch know his network was spreading falsehoods, but he also continued to allow the hosts and guest speakers to appear on screen.

Murdoch acknowledged that multiple popular Fox News hosts such as Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro were “endorsing” the conspiracy that the election had been stolen.

He also said he knew regular guests such as Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell were spreading the election lies, but he continued to allow them on air. His reason, as he explained in Lindell’s case, was that “it is not red or blue, it is green.” What is democracy compared to dollars, apparently?

On January 5, 2021, Murdoch considered releasing a joint statement with Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham saying some variation of “The election is over, and Joe Biden won.” They didn’t, and the next day, hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the certification of votes and potentially to capture and kill lawmakers.

Fox News has long been accused of peddling Trump’s falsehoods and toadying to the former president. Hannity and Carlson have appeared at Trump rallies and acted as unofficial advisers. In further proof that Fox and Trump were unethical bedfellows, Murdoch also said that he gave Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, private access to supposedly confidential information about Biden’s campaign ads before it was published.

This isn’t the first bombshell Dominion has dropped regarding its lawsuit, which is expected to go to trial in April. Earlier this month, the company released a trove of messages and deposition excerpts from Fox News hosts, including Carlson and Ingraham, in which they admitted they knew the election conspiracies were false and the Trumpist lawyers spouting them weren’t credible. But they continued to have these guests on their shows anyway.

Fox has gone mum about the Dominion lawsuit since that initial court document release, even prohibiting its media correspondent, Howard Kurtz, from covering the case.

Fox has argued that its post-2020 election coverage was newsworthy and thus protected by the First Amendment. But Murdoch’s deposition just further drives home the fact that they knew what they were doing, and it wasn’t journalism.

Idaho conservatives introduced a bill Monday that would ban drag performances from public places and target Pride celebrations, making it the latest in a long line of states trying to limit LGBTQ rights.

The president of the Idaho Family Policy Center, a conservative Christian organization, introduced the bill, which would allow parents to sue event organizers and promoters who allow minors to be present at shows that feature “sexual conduct.” It would also prohibit such shows from taking place in public spaces like parks.

Blaine Conzatti said the bill had been prompted by the 2022 Pride Month celebrations in Idaho. “It does not matter whether we’re talking about a sexually explicit striptease or a sexually explicit drag show,” he told the House State Affairs Committee Monday. “Neither belongs in a public park, a public facility, or other places where children are present.”

The bill defines sexual conduct as dances or movements with “accessories that exaggerate” sexual characteristics and acts.

Conzatti has previously called homosexuality “sinful,” “an abomination,” and “immoral.” He issued a statement in September urging Idaho lawmakers to ban drag in public, calling the performances “appalling displays of sexual deviancy” and comparing them to strip clubs or adult movie stores.

Idaho has now joined the list of more than 20 bills nationwide that are seeking to ban drag performances in public, ostensibly to protect children from being exposed to obscene material. These laws could be challenged in court on the grounds they violate the First Amendment. Marjorie Heins, a First Amendment lawyer, told Middle Tennessee State University’s First Amendment Encyclopedia that a law that bans both protected expression, such as drag, and unprotected expression, such as obscenity, is too broad and therefore unconstitutional.

While proponents of these bills say they are trying to protect children, it’s becoming increasingly clear they are really just targeting LGBTQ people. The Idaho House passed another bill targeting Pride last week. The bill would restrict state agencies from sponsoring nongovernmental organizations and events such as Boise Pride. Instead, state agencies would have to get approval from the governor to give financial support to a nonprofit or NGO.

Tennessee became the first state earlier this month to pass a drag ban bill, also prompting concerns about an attack on trans people and Pride celebrations more generally. Governor Bill Lee has yet to sign or veto it.

“Discriminating against drag performances based on the content of their expression is a direct contradiction of a fundamental principle of our democracy: our First Amendment right to express ourselves on and off the stage,” the ACLU of Tennessee said the day the bill passed. “So, let’s call this what it is—a malicious attempt to remove LGBTQ people from public life.”