Texas GOP Wants Death Penalty For Abortion Patients

"Putting pregnant people to death for abortion has officially gone mainstream," said one reproductive justice group on Wednesday as the Texas Republican Party considered a platform for 2024 that includes a new proposal to ensure "equal protection for the preborn" under the state's criminal laws.

As writer and rights advocate Jessica Valenti, author of the Substack newsletter "Abortion, Every Day," explained on social media, the proposal within the state GOP's platform may have gone largely unnoticed as delegates voted on it last Saturday because the language used in the document doesn't explicitly call for abortion patients to face the death penalty.

But that's exactly what "equal protection for the preborn" means, said Valenti.

"'Equal protection' is a call for abortion to be treated as homicide, and for abortion patients to be prosecuted as [murderers]," Valenti wrote, pointing to bills in South Carolina and Georgia that were both called the Prenatal Equal Protection Act and aimed to make abortion punishable as a homicide.

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