The Republican Party of Texas is considering a platform that appears to endorse the death penalty for abortion providers and patients.
Texas delegates voted on a 2024 platform at the state’s GOP Convention on Saturday and aim to tally the votes by Wednesday to finalize their platform for the coming year. The proposal called for new legislation to solidify fetal personhood ideology into law, define abortion care as homicide and criminalize in vitro fertilization, first reported by feminist writer Jessica Valenti.
The 50-page document also includes a slew of other far-right ideas such as proclaiming that gender-affirming care is “child abuse,” requirements that Christianity and the Bible be taught in public schools, and clarifies that Texas “retains the right to secede from the United States.”
The platform is seen as more of a wish list than a binding document, but it’s a critical reflection of how far right the Texas Republican Party has moved in recent years.
The GOP platform calls for an “equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization,” and later states that “abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide.” The phrase “equal protection of the law” is used in the anti-choice movement to define abortion as homicide, and criminalizes abortion physicians and patients as murderers.
The Republican Party of Texas did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Texas has executed more people than any other state in the country. It’s not a huge leap that homicide charges against a person who the state believes murdered a child would garner the death penalty.
“The state of Texas is a leader in controlling people with their penal system,” said Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel and legal director at Lawyering for Reproductive Justice: If/When/How. “If a fetus is considered a person, then it’s considered a child, which is a vulnerable population. … Homicide of identified vulnerable persons escalates penalties.”
As Valenti points out, South Carolina and Georgia recently tried to pass legislation called the Prenatal Equal Protection Act, which aimed to punish abortion as murder under the states’ criminal codes. Texas lawmakers have also proposed legislation — often referred to as “abolish abortion bills” — to erase a distinction between abortion and homicide.
Even within the anti-choice movement, prosecuting an abortion patient is a fringe belief. Most anti-abortion laws include carve-outs to ensure that a woman is not criminalized for her pregnancy outcome (although many have been arrested, despite these laws).
“I wish I could say that the idea of the death penalty is a jump, but it’s not,” said Diaz-Tello, adding that for the anti-abortion movement in Texas, “it’s actually the next logical step.”
The platform also addressed two major abortion issues that are in front of the Supreme Court this session: the use of abortion pills and life-saving abortion care in emergency medical situations. The document endorsed banning the “manufacturing, importation, sale, dispensing and use of abortifacients,” which Texas currently does. It also states that they support Texas’ current medical emergency exception within the state’s near-total abortion ban, adding that although the exception language should not be altered, “implementation does need to be addressed” — likely referring to the dozens of women in Texas who have nearly died because they were refused life-saving abortion care.
