In 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a 6-3 ruling. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization upended 50 years of policy that many had assumed was settled law. However, the campaign to end abortion rights didn’t start with the landmark Dobbs decision. Much of the legwork was done in states like Texas, which have been chipping away at reproductive rights for decades.
Texas’s attacks on reproductive rights kicked into high gear in 2011 with the defunding of family planning clinics as retribution for their referring patients to clinics that–at the time–provided abortion services. The state estimated that roughly 300,000 women would lose access to family planning services as a result of the cuts. That same year, Texas lawmakers required sonograms prior to receiving an abortion.
The following legislative session, Texas introduced an omnibus anti-abortion bill that garnered national attention following then-State Senator Wendy Davis’s historic eleven-hour filibuster. H.B. 2, which ultimately passed in the second special session that year, banned all abortions after 20 weeks and forced the closure of all but nineteen abortion clinics in the state. Though H.B. 2 was overturned in the 2016 Supreme Court ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the damage was largely done. Clinics had already been forced to close and faced an expensive and long road to reopen.
In 2021, lawmakers passed a law barring abortions once electric pulses–and not a heartbeat as the bill’s author’s have falsely claimed–are detected, which could be as early as 6 weeks gestation, before many people even know they are pregnant. That same legislation created a right of action allowing vigilante lawsuits against anyone suspected of helping another person get an abortion. Lawmakers also passed a trigger law banning all abortions in the state if Roe were to be overturned. The Supreme Court did exactly that the following year.
With abortion functionally outlawed, lawmakers did not pass any major abortion restrictions during the 2023 legislative session. However, filed legislation may be a harbinger of what’s to come. Introduced bills included H.B. 787, barring companies that aide their employees in seeking an abortion from receiving tax incentives; H.B. 1280, limiting franchise tax credits available to companies whose health plans offer abortion coverage, including travel vouchers; and H.B. 2690, which, among its many provisions, would open up web hosting companies like Google Cloud or SquareSpace to civil litigation for hosting websites offering information on receiving abortion services. One particularly extreme bill would criminally charge people who get abortions with murder. Many local governments have passed or pursued bans on people using their roads to drive out of state to get an abortion.
Though abortion and other sexual and reproductive health decisions are deeply personal matters, laws that restrict them have direct implications for companies trying to do business in Texas. Unintended pregnancies in places where abortion services are outlawed will take women out of the workforce and out of educational pursuits. Analysis from the Institute of Women’s Policy Research found that abortion restrictions cost the U.S. economy an average of $173 billion per year due to labor force reductions, lower earning levels, increased turnover, and increased time off from work among women in the private sector. The same analysis estimates that without these restrictions nearly 597,000 more women would be in the country’s labor force annually. Texas alone sees an average economic loss of over $23 billion. Beyond workforce woes, businesses may see direct hits to their bottom lines if states like Texas adopt tax penalties for businesses that support their employees’ healthcare decisions.
To quote then-State Rep. and current-oil and gas regulator Wayne Christian back in 2011 when family planning clinics were defunded, “this is a war on birth control and abortions and everything.” What “everything” entails remains to be seen, but fringe ideas rarely stay that way in Texas. When lawmakers suggest they’re open to banning IVF, outlawing contraceptives, and punishing businesses that cover abortion services and/or logistical costs, believe them.