AUSTIN, Texas (LifeSiteNews) – Texas Republicans filed legislation to impose civil liability on anyone distributing abortion pills in the Lone Star State in an effort to prevent the pills from undermining Texas pro-life laws.

The Woman and Child Protection Act states that nobody may “manufacture, possess, or distribute an abortion-inducing drug in this state; mail, transport, deliver, prescribe, or provide an abortion-inducing drug in any manner to or from any person or location in this state; (or) provide information on the method for obtaining an abortion-inducing drug.”

The “mother or father of an unborn child may bring a civil action under this section for the wrongful death of the unborn child from the use of an abortion-inducing drug, regardless of whether the other parent brings a civil action for the wrongful death,” it says. “The biological father of an unborn child may bring the action regardless of whether the father was married to the unborn child ’s mother at the time of the unborn child ’s conception or death.”

The vast majority of abortions are illegal in Texas, but the state is still dealing with the problem of out-of-state actors using pills to circumvent Texas law, facilitating abortions that take place completely in private. Last month, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York abortionist for mailing abortion-inducing drugs into the state, securing an order to stop a $100,000 fine.

“A person could order abortion pills online right now and they’d be delivered to their doorstep the next day … Texas must pass the Woman and Child Protection Act to save preborn babies and make our state the leader against the underground abortion industry,” said Ashley Leenerts, legislative director of Texas Right to Life.

“These drugs not only take the lives of innocent children but also abandon their mothers to trauma and suffering, all while their exploiters remain immune from accountability,” said Republican state Rep. Jeff Leach, lead author of the proposed law. “This bill ensures that those responsible for injury and death from abortion drugs can be held liable, offering justice for women and their children. Rest assured, Texas will lead the nation in defending women and unborn children from exploitation and HB 5510 is a crucial step to doing just that.”

Easy access to and interstate distribution of abortion pills is one of the abortion lobby’s most potent tools for perpetuating abortion-on-demand post-Roe v. Wade that they are aggressively pursuing regardless of the risks to the women they are supposedly serving.

In November 2022, Operation Rescue reported that a net decrease of 36 abortion facilities in 2022 led to the lowest number in almost 50 years, yet the chemical abortion business “surged” with 64 percent of new facilities built last year specializing in dispensing mifepristone and misoprostol. Citing data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, STAT says mifepristone “accounts for roughly half of all abortions in the U.S.” 

This is despite the fact that a 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.”

“A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” Catholic University of America research associate Michael New wrote. “They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency-room visits increased over 500 percent from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”

Whether the issue will be resolved nationally remains to be seen. President Donald Trump has taken a number of pro-life actions since returning to office, but said on the campaign trail that he would not enforce federal law prohibiting abortion pills from being dispensed by mail. Pro-lifers hope statements by his Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about reviewing the science behind abortion pills may mark the beginning of a reversal.