Editorial
I make a conscious effort to keep my editorial opinions as close to home as possible. While occasionally readers have asked me to consider writing about national issues, I prefer to focus on topics where my perspective can potentially influence the outcome.
With the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade in recent weeks, the once federal-level conversation has moved to a much closer venue. While I also shy away from large state issues, there is some rough terrain on the horizon, and we need to be discussing a path through uncharted territory, and I admit I have lost a great deal of faith in our state’s leadership at this point.
The Texas Democratic Party continues to stumble around on jelly-legs like Ted Kennedy at an open bar, and any semblance of common sense is being sucked from the GOP faster than helium from the balloons at a kindergarten birthday party.
While Democrats are busy in Austin trying to import as many left-leaning Californians as possible, the three Republican stooges sitting at the top of the Texas political heap are focused on trying to surf the media wave of coronavirus pandemic, power grid failures, gun violence, and border control issues into the upper chambers where a run for the oval office is not out of the realm of possibilities.
Meanwhile, the supreme court overturned the near 50-year-old abortion law, and the state’s ‘trigger law’ will be going into effect in the upcoming days. The Republican-led legislature passed HB 1280, dubbed the “Human Life Protection Act” in 2021. The law prohibits abortions “except under limited circumstances, such as a life-threatening condition to the mother caused by the pregnancy.”
“Texas law in a post-Roe world has already been written. Now that the Supreme Court has finally overturned Roe, I will do everything in my power to protect the unborn and uphold the state laws duly enacted by the Texas Legislature,” wrote Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a June advisory statement upon the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
It’s a nice sentiment, and a largely empty one. Perhaps it’s the writer in me — or my distrust of attorneys — but I can’t help getting caught on the phrase, “...protect the unborn...” It seems to me that Paxton and legislators have already worked to protect the unborn. Roe is overturned and abortion in the state prohibited.
Regardless of which side of the abortion argument one might stand, I would like to believe that each of us can embrace the idea that once a child is born, we should do everything we can as a society to secure the safety and future of that new life.
Here’s a staggering statistic. Texas has performed roughly 50,000 abortions each year since 2014, a procedure that will soon be illegal in the state. If those numbers are only reduced by half in future years, that is a potential increase of 250,000 new citizens to a state that grew by 4 million in the last decade alone with no such laws on the books.
While it’s nice to think legislators are considering the math here, we are talking about the same politicians that look for ways to reduce public education funding, has woefully inadequate social service and family development programs, and has dragged its feet for more than a decade on expanding the state’s Medicare/Medicaid program to better care for those in need.
I would love to hear some serious discussion about how Texas is revamping its programs to address the need it created through the laws it passed, but since Texas Senator Charles Perry comes into town only long enough to talk about Charles Perry, and the newly redistricted House Rep. James Frank has been a ghost who only seems to talk to county judges, you might just want to give them a call.
• Senator Charles Perry’s Lubbock office: 806-783-9934
• House Rep. James Frank’s Wichita Falls office: 940-767-1700