Texas Right to Life Rebukes a Troll

"Do not add to His words,
Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar."
Proverbs 30:6

One unfortunate reality of pro-Life activism in Texas is that there are people who do fantastic work in non-political aspects of pro-Life ministry yet make TERRIBLE decisions when it comes to politics.

Earlier this week, one of those usual suspects attempted to insinuate that Texas Right to Life has collaborated with Planned Parenthood in the past.

Texas Right to Life addressed the issue on their website:

Texas Right to Life incorporates both long-term and short-term legislative strategies when setting the Pro-Life agenda for each legislative session. One long-term goal is to repeal and remove the loophole-ridden judicial bypass procedure through which minors obtain permission from judges to undergo secret abortions without parental involvement. In order to strike this judicial bypass provision from Texas law, various parts of the existing parental involvement law must be tweaked, stricken, and/or rewritten. A few myopic Pro-Lifers winced at striking parts of current law, claiming that such a move is just what Planned Parenthood would want, totally oblivious to the impact of closing the judicial bypass loophole, which would have ensured that a parent must give de facto consent before his/her minor daughter can undergo an abortion.

This move is part of a national strategy with far-reaching implications. However, the abortion advocates in the State House vociferously opposed efforts to remove the judicial bypass and even to tweak the evidentiary standards in regard to the pregnant minor. Despite imaginary partnerships with Planned Parenthood, the abortion industry and its advocates prefer the bypass provision and militantly oppose Texas Right to Life’s legislative initiative to strengthen the law and reduce the number of minors upon whom they can prey.

In Belotti v. Baird, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that if a state enacts a parental consent law, the state must also have a judicial bypass mechanism. Even though these laws have the same impact on reducing teen abortions, the semantics [“consent” vs “notification”] change the legal framework. Thus, a parental notification law without judicial bypass requires every minor to involve her parents in an abortion situation. On the other hand, laws requiring parental consent must allow an alternative path to abortion, i.e., the judicial bypass, preempting parental involvement. So the consent law must be changed before eliminating the judicial bypass loophole.

Read the whole thing here.

Bottom Line: Technical changes to legal language designed to comply with a United States Supreme Court ruling does not make one a "collaborator" with Planned Parenthood.