A recent survey coming out of the Austin-based collaborative Resound Research for Reproductive Health has found that Texas women are not especially clear on the nitty gritty details of their state’s abortion ban.
Given that abortion has been banned in the state for two years, one would think people would be aware that, well, abortion has been banned in the state for two years — but 73 percent of those surveyed incorrectly believed that abortions were still available at abortion clinics in the state. Twenty-one percent believed that people were still regularly getting abortions at those clinics.
Additionally, 32 percent of Texas women believe that there is an exception for rape and incest victims when there is not. Twenty-four percent believe that there is an exception for fatal fetal anomalies, situations in which the fetus will not survive after birth, but there is not.
It goes the other way a little bit as well, though I’m inclined to push back a little on those examples. According to the study, only “43% of survey respondents correctly indicated that pregnant people can obtain an abortion in Texas if they have a life-threatening medical condition.”
The law is not especially clear on what is a “life-threatening medical condition” and that language is so vague that doctors really do not know where the line is between what lawmakers consider an acceptable “life-threatening medical condition” and something that is going to cause them to lose their license or be sent to prison. So, in practice, the law absolutely does prevent Texas residents from obtaining an abortion “if they have a life-threatening medical condition.”
Additionally, “[a]lmost one quarter (24%) of survey respondents incorrectly believed that Texas had passed a law prohibiting travel to another state to get an abortion.” Technically, this is true, but …
As the study correctly notes, “officials in four counties and several cities–primarily in West Texas–have passed local ordinances that prohibit the use of county or city roads to transport a pregnant person to another state to have an abortion.” Additionally, if someone else does drive a pregnant person to get an abortion, or provide them with the funds they need to do so, the state’s abortion bounty hunter law allows for anyone who finds out about that to sue them in civil court. So while it may not specifically be “illegal,” there’s a lot that makes it difficult.
As far as those other results go, I suspect that what we’ve got here is a “don’t think about how the sausage is made” situation. Republicans in office receive a large amount of funding and support from groups that do not want any exceptions whatsoever and may also hold those views themselves. However, most of them are relatively aware of the fact that many voters don’t really want to think too much about forcing rape victims to give birth against their will or force anyone to give birth to a dead baby with its brain outside of its head. So that’s not what they talk about. That’s the part they gloss over.
There’s also the fact that we have a very divided media and the media a lot of people get — and, more importantly, trust — does not tell them about things like this.
There is a reason why, whenever you hear people talking about abortion, they talk about sluts who need to be taught a lesson about personal responsibility and face the consequences of their actions instead of “using abortion like birth control.” Because that’s something people can get with. They can rationalize it as “course correction” that will “save” the sluts and even make them happier in the end as they find joy in motherhood instead of sin. They may even be able to look at it as something that will save society through the magic of shotgun weddings.
It’s a whole lot easier to tolerate horrible things if you are able to convince yourself that they are mostly only happening to people you think are “bad” and that the consequences to those you see as innocent are merely incidental.
Unfortunate as this may be, there are a lot of people out there who are very likely grateful to politicians for glossing over these parts, because they don’t want to have to think “Wait, is this a bad idea?” or, godforbid, make them question voting for the Republican Party. They don’t want anyone else to question voting for Republicans or opposing abortion rights either, especially since they know that is exactly what has happened every single time people have thought hard enough about what these bans actually mean. So they go with the “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” approach. They are more than happy to pay no attention to that man/fatal fetal anomaly behind the curtain.
All in all, the survey found that 84 percent of Texas women were misinformed about the law. I’d love to blame politicians and misinformation in right-wing media for people not understanding how bad these laws actually are, but the information is out there if people want it. The problem is when they don’t.
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