Does the New Texas Law Completely Ban Abortion?

No.

By
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A viral Instagram post claims that Texas banned abortion with Senate Bill 8, a bill that was passed by the Republican legislature and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in May of this year. Abortion providers attempted to intervene and requested the Supreme Court block the law until legal challenges were heard. The court declined to do so, allowing SB8 to go into effect on September 1, 2021. 

As noted in a previous fact check, SB8 is not a full abortion ban, but a limitation on when abortions can be performed: 

“​​On May 19, Abbott signed a law stating that ‘a physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman unless the physician has determined … whether the woman’s unborn child has a detectable fetal heartbeat.’ The law creates an exception if the physician determines a medical emergency makes an abortion necessary. Critics have noted that fetal heartbeats can be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, limiting the window in which a woman can legally seek an abortion in Texas.”

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  1. Emma

    Given most women have no idea they are pregnant the first month, this is essentially a ban. By the time they can get an appointment--especially with covid, it can take an additional 2 weeks.

    Gotta love a pro life bill that pays people to target and harass other human beings.

    Is this about life or money?

    I cant wait for this same trick and tactic to be used on gun owners.

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    Vlad M.

    Indeed, it does not ban all abortions but some people really want to act as if it did ban all abortions. It's part of the culture war.

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    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    In looking at the path2progress picture, I don't think texans banned sex, although sex can lead to abortions....

    I wonder why people think using a 1960s shock word still has shock value. Comes off pretty lame today. If you want shock value today, you need to use identity terms.

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    DougAz

    I'm surprised Texas doesn't put Yellow Stars on pregnant women. Oh wait. Under this similar to "Slave codes" laws, it would be all women. Or maybe craftily, testing..mandatory or get a Yellow Star.

    What a devolution of humanity and democracy

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    Ms. SSM

    In fact I just realized you used “completely” in your question and explained how it didn’t completely ban abortions. But the fact check is on the Instagram post and they don’t use the word completely. So you added a word and then fact checked that. This is misleading. Why does your headline say completely ban when what you are fact checking does not?

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    Ms. SSM

    It doesn’t ban all of them but it certainly bans the vast vast VAST majority of them.

    I’m going to have to say this is the first fact check that lacks needed context. There is nothing that says something like 90% of abortions happen after 6 weeks. Nothing that mentions that because of how we count pregnancy weeks most woman won’t know they are pregnant till around the time abortion is banned.

    Sorry but if something bans 90% of something -It’s a ban. You can say it’s not a complete ban but it is not misleading to say TX banned abortion. I don’t think you can cry foul on the use of the word ban by saying - we still let 1/10th of abortions happen.

    Disappointed in this one.

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  7. Kathy Kattenburg

    "As noted in a previous fact check, SB8 is not a full abortion ban, but a limitation on when abortions can be performed:

    “​​On May 19, Abbott signed a law stating that ‘a physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman unless the physician has determined … whether the woman's unborn child has a detectable fetal heartbeat.’ The law creates an exception if the physician determines a medical emergency makes an abortion necessary. Critics have noted that fetal heartbeats can be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, limiting the window in which a woman can legally seek an abortion in Texas.”

    Are you frigging kidding me? What would be a full abortion ban in your book of facts? If abortion was banned starting five minutes after sex? If she was bleeding out on the examination table? That would be a medical "emergency" even for you, right, Alec? I mean, she can get an abortion before the earliest date she could possibly know she was pregnant, so that means it's not a complete ban? She can get an abortion if she has a massive heart attack that doesn't kill her immediately but will in five minutes? And it wouldn't be a complete abortion ban unless they refused to save her life?

    This is not fact-checking, this is editorializing.

    I have spent much of the last two days arguing with people who truly value fetuses more than the women carrying them, but even so, I have never been as angry, furious, outraged, as I am right now. It doesn't feel good to know there are men (and women, but here it's been mostly men) who think so little of women.

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      Kmregan7

      If she's bleeding out on the table, but there is still a "detectible heartbeat" what doctor would risk being sued by Operation Rescue or some other anti-abortion group with gobs of money in order to perform an abortion, knowing as we do, that as sad as they'll say it is, women dying don't really bother them. (See: Savita Halappanar).

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      1. Mary Stine

        This is a very good point and one that my older nurse friends who support Roe have noted. Prior to Roe many poor women, especially women of color, were left to "bleed out" if an attempted abortion was suspected. Too many of those women might have just suffered a miscarriage, but were not always believed.
        As a practical matter, you are right that many doctors will refuse to help women who fall into the danger zone. Doctors are already paying a fortune for malpractice insurance, which will probably not cover being sued under the new Texas law.

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        DougAz

        If they ignore the woman's beating heart ..😔

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      Kmregan7

      You know, it occurs to me that since an actual heartbeat doesn't actually occur until much later, a doctor could continue performing abortions up to 16 or even 20 weeks - as that's when the heart is fully formed and capable of actually beating. What happens BEFORE that isn't an actual heartbeat.

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    Phil H

    This is not a ban in the sense that that a criminal statute would ban abortion. Instead, it subjects certain abortions to the risk of a civil lawsuit and a $10,000 civil award.

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      Pat Riot

      Oh come on.

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    2. Kathy Kattenburg

      And it's not "certain abortions." It's effectively ALL abortions. Calling it exceptions for if women seek abortions at 4 weeks gestation, or if they will be dead in five minutes are not exceptions at all. But not only is it a lie to say such a law "restricts abortions to certain situations," it's a cruel lie. It's a sadistic lie. The law applied to 99.5% of all possible abortions. That's banning abortion, not "restricting" it.

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    3. Kathy Kattenburg

      That's word games and complete nonsense. A woman's next-door neighbor could sue her for merely walking into a clinic. An abortion provider could decide it wasn't a life-saving abortion wasn't a "medical emergency." Paying cash bounties to encourage informing on neighbors, friends, family members is not any kind of law or justice.

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      1. Kathy Kattenburg

        Oh, dear. The third sentence above should read "A private citizen could decide that a medical emergency was not a medical emergency, and file suit against the abortion provider "

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    Victor Clairmont

    Run Alec the pro-choicer’s are coming for you!!!

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    1. Emma

      No if we were going to do that we'd pass a law that allows my friends to sue him and collect money from it.

      Like Texas!

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      Ms. SSM

      https://youtu.be/xAYSqTu5_ZY

      Reading this made this pop into me head.

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    Pat Riot

    This is misleading: almost all abortions in Texas occur after the "heartbeat". Most woman don't even know they are pregnant before six weeks.

    That's okay. When California uses the Texas precedent to "ban guns" you can't call it a "ban" when law says you can own muskets made before 1780. I look forward to The Dispatch clearing that up for us.

    It's a "ban" folks. Give me a break.

    As a side note, I continue to find it ultra-strange that anti-abortion advocates *downplay* their legal victories and downplay the implications of their very explicitly stated wishes. What are they afraid of? I certainly don't hide *my* wishes for policy I think should be enacted.



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    1. Emma

      Yes! And watch the gop lose more women voters in the midterms.

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    2. Kathy Kattenburg

      Omg, thank you, Pat. It's awful that I have to feel this grateful for common decency, but I do.

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    3. CatoTheElder

      By the way, I do like your analogy to gun-buying. After all, you are correct: if one is allowed to buy pre-1780 muskets, the law restricting gun buying isn’t a complete ban. Just a pretty darn effective approximation of one. And of course that’s what gets folks going on both topics.

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        Pat Riot

        Yes, and if there was an article titled, "Fact Check: Hysterical Gun Owners Say Democrats Banned All Guns But They Didn't Really*", well, that would be dishonest...

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    4. CatoTheElder

      Pat, take a break, my friend. Even Don Quijote didn’t fight every windmill!

      In the context of the query presented (Does the New Texas Law Completely Ban Abortion?), the only honest answer is “No.” But Alec went on to describe what the law does provide for—and I’m gonna say right here and now, the law is dumber than the guy who didn’t pass the IQ test to be one of the Three Stooges—and it isn’t an outright ban.

      Now, wait, before you get your dander up in a dust devil, let’s agree that the general intent is to reduce the number of abortions as much as possible, using an early-occurring threshold as the cut-off—and fetal heartbeat (though there can be some argument about when there is something to be legitimately called a heartbeat)—is certainly an early threshold—well under the first-trimester mark that many discuss. So, I’m pretty sure those who put the law together and passed it are hoping to come very close to abolishing abortions.

      But it’s unfair to Alec to say that his answer is misleading. It’s not—he’s correct. And he properly goes on to describe the facts of the matter. He doesn’t delve into policy, morality, legality, etc., but just lays out the general facts.

      I think you might want to save your ire for those more deserving.

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        Ms. SSM

        I’d have agreed but the fact check is on the poster and the poster doesn’t use the word completely. Alec did and you did but it’s not in the viral post he showed. So I think it’s editorializing to add it.

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        1. CatoTheElder

          I didn’t really look much at the poster, but I’m not at all sure it matters. I suppose there might be a slight quibble to be had there—although the word “ban” by itself, without qualifier, implies “complete”. I would not call it editorializing to add it; an equally strong argument is that it is simply clarifying what is being fact-checked.

          When even the Washington Post goes to lengths to describe the law as “a near-total abortion ban”, and the NY Times says the law “essentially bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy”—using the dual qualifiers “essentially” and “after six weeks”—I think it’s only fair and appropriate to expect a fact-check article to be equally precise and specific.

          As I’ve said elsewhere here, if the article was meant to be a full-on analysis of the law, its likely and/or intended or hoped-for effects, and so forth, the expectations would be different than for a fact-check. It is clear that Alec got the facts right. Any arguments that he is being misleading are weak and insubstantial, at best. Accusations of dishonesty are certainly uncalled for.

          Given the nature of journalism, it’s very hard to produce an article on any subject, of even the barest, simplest nature, that is completely bereft of even a hint of “editorializing”. It is especially difficult to do so in articles touching upon matters of great feeling and controversy, as here. But that’s all on a separate point: it remains the case that Alec produced a fact-check article that purported to address the question of whether Texas SB8 “completely banned abortion”, as per the headline.

          Do you see a need to quibble with the misleading nature of the viral post? After all, if they used the word “ban”, without qualification, should not the general reader properly interpret that as meaning a “complete ban” unless stated otherwise? In that case, is not the primary source of confusion and/or misleading content the viral post? If you don’t see that the Instagram or Twitter or whatever it was post was itself at least as misleading as you claim the act of adding “completely” in the headline is, I suspect your own biases may be having too great an influence on your objectivity.

          This entire matter really arose from people wanting to scream “Fire!” when they see a flicker of light at the other end of the room that just might be a candle.

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            Ms. SSM

            With all due respect Cato- it’s a fact check of the Viral Instagram post. If you didn’t look at it that’s fine. But this is a fact check for it not some nebulous idea. If they want to fact check the nebulous idea so be it. But then they shouldn’t have called it a fact check of a viral Instagram post and then showed the post. It’s not unreasonable for me to look at the claims being made in the poster they are fact checking as my baseline here. You mention the qualifiers of the other publications and then say “ —I think it’s only fair and appropriate to expect a fact-check article to be equally precise and specific.”. However I AM expecting them to be equally precise and specific. You are the one saying they can fall back on reasonable interpretations of words.

            “After all, if they used the word “ban”, without qualification, should not the general reader properly interpret that as meaning a “complete ban” unless stated otherwise?”

            Not necessarily.
            If that was true the fact check question wouldn’t need to ADD the word completely. Consider this. Remove the word completely from the headline. Doing so would make it correspond to the poster. Now read the fact check. Does it make sense? The fact check focuses on the completely part not the ban part. That’s just how it’s written. And it doesn’t make as much sense without that emphasis. Which would be fine IF the thing fact check said completely. It doesn’t. People use the word ban all the time and in fact some abortions WERE banned. Just not all of them. That’s what the fact check says. But the poster never said all or completely. The Fact check did.

            Im not accusing Alec of any malfeasance. I think you took offense to that on Alec’s behalf and rightly so. I respect his work. He gets complaints about said work all the time. Rarely do I agree with it and I’m certain he is a great and ethical journalist. But he is also a human and therefore he can be wrong or biased. Or miss something. It could be like you he read completely into the word ban. He should not have. Not for a fact check. This particular fact check is not fully accurate to the thing BEING fact checked.

            Bottom line - He asked a question. He answered it correctly. It’s just not fully accurate to the Instagram post pictured.


            Lastly this isn’t a critique of the poster. It’s a critique if a fact check of the poster. It’s not a defense to say the poster is more misleading then the fact check. I don’t think the poster is misleading because I did not read ALL or COMPLETE into the word ban. In fact that was my point in my very first comment. Something that bans 90% of something is a ban. However if I was critiquing it I’d suggest they use the phrase banned almost all.

            But at the end of the day I don’t think this is as accurate as the original viral post is what the Dispatch or Alec was going for. I am certain their standards are just a bit higher.

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      2. Kathy Kattenburg

        His answer is extremely misleading.

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        Pat Riot

        The answer is absolutely *not* honest. Virtually all abortions in Texas have now stopped because of this law (if not all).

        The author here is playing *word games* and nothing more: the conclusion, in context, would be that Texas "didn't really ban abortions" and that's just a bunch of lib hooey to gin up donations. But for all practical purposes, that's exactly what Texas has done.

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        1. CatoTheElder

          With all due respect Pat, I disagree. Even if we stipulate that, as you said in your original post “almost all abortions in Texas occur after ‘the heartbeat’”, that alone means that there is not a complete abortion ban. Now, I agree, to some extent, this is nit-picking, but only from a very broad view. When it comes to absolute yes/no, the correct answer was given. It just happens not to be the one you’d prefer, and I think that has led you to draw ungenerous conclusions about the author and his motives.

          Would you prefer that a fact-checker give just the big, broad view? Or the meticulous view? Or perhaps a combination of both—acknowledging the meticulous while giving the broad perspective as well? This last is what was done. Anyone with a lick of reason can see that while Texas did not undertake an effort to completely ban abortion, they tried hard to find a way to get close to that, and, if, from a practical perspective, they were to find a few years down the road that Texas has experienced a complete and utter ban, I’m sure they would celebrate.

          But you’re insisting on shooting the messenger, as I see it. I suspect the urge to do so stems from frustration about the bizarre, reckless nature of the law itself, even greater frustration that the pro-life crowd has achieved a significant advance towards their goal—which is one you are vehemently opposed to, and a strong suspicion that Mr. Dent, working at a conservative publication, is likely a pro-life sort and as such is trying to present things favorably to those with similar views.

          I don’t know what Alec’s views on abortion are, and I do not feel comfortable reaching any even tentative conclusion about his views based on this article. I suppose that I could gather up what evidence there is and then, if I were forced to make a bet, choose, but…I’m not forced to bet, nor to choose, nor to unduly burden Mr. Dent with my weakly supported conclusion about what his views on abortion might be. And I read the same article you did.

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            Pat Riot

            You say you "disagree" but I am not seeing what you are disagreeing with. I never said the headline was false, I said it was misleading. It's like a headline reading: "EMERGENCY IN CENTRAL MANHATTAN" and then the story being about somebody who hurt themself on a sidewalk and needed to be rushed to the hospital. It's technically true, but in the plain way that language is used, it's not using it in a way that people expect--and intentionally so.

            If Mr. Dent's subheading read:

            "For all but 1% of abortions that occur in Texas, yes"

            or

            "Not 100% of abortions, only 99% of them"

            Then it would not have been misleading.

            (It just occurred to me that the Tweet Mr. Dent posted is also "technically accurate" as well since it just said, "abortion" and not "all abortions").

            As for Mr. Dent's motives, I wouldn't know--my comment wasn't meant to be about him (although it was written like it was so that's on me).

            If I had to *guess* a motive it would be that he is eager to show how "hysterical" non-Republicans are about RvW being overturned. "Look at these dummies freaking out over nothing" and so on. That was the theme for Mr. French's article about the SC ruling as well.


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          2. Kathy Kattenburg

            "Almost all abortions occur after a woman knows she's pregnant, so if a woman is allowed an abortion when she doesn't know she's pregnant, that in itself means it's not a complete abortion ban."😂😂

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