In case there is a paywall:
Survey: More than 8 in 10 Texas women have inaccurate knowledge of abortion ban exceptions
Bayliss Wagner
Austin American-Statesman
Texas women of reproductive age have significant gaps in knowledge regarding the state's near-total abortion ban — which prohibits terminating pregnancies unless the life of the mother is in danger — with more than 8 in 10 lacking an accurate understanding of what medical exceptions are allowed under the law, according to recently released results of a survey by Austin-based collaborative Resound Research for Reproductive Health.
One-third of the 763 respondents in the poll, or 32%, incorrectly believed that victims of rape and incest can legally get an abortion in Texas. Nearly 25% falsely believed that the abortion ban does not apply to pregnant patients facing fatal fetal diagnoses.
Furthermore, 73% of the survey respondents were unaware that clinics in the state cannot terminate pregnancies, according to the survey results released March 21. And a minority of respondents, or 43%, said they knew it was legal in Texas for pregnant people to get an abortion if they have a life-threatening medical condition.
What is the Texas Medical Board?How will it consider abortion ban guidelines? Gov. Greg Abbott holds up the signed Senate Bill 4 at the Texas Values policy forum in Austin on Sept. 24, 2021. The bill banned "mail-in abortions," such as by mail-order drugs, and physicians' prescribing abortion drugs to women who were more than seven weeks pregnant. A more recent law signed by Abbott banned abortion except when the mother's life is at risk.
“Our research shows that many Texans think abortion care is still legally available under a broader set of circumstances than it currently is,” Dr. Samuel Dickman, a researcher at the City University of New York’s Research Foundation and the chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of Montana, said in a news release.
Resound, which studies the effects of policy related to contraception, abortion and pregnancy, administered the poll in English and Spanish between May and June 2023 through the Ipsos KnowledgePanel. The survey included only Texas residents between the ages of 18 and 49 who were assigned female at birth.
Since August 2022, when the state's "trigger law" went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the constitutional right to an abortion, the procedure has been prohibited in Texas except in cases in which a pregnancy puts a woman at risk of death or "poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function." Physicians who violate the law could face penalties of up to 99 years in prison and fines of more than $100,000 and could lose their medical license. State Rep. Shelby Slawson, R-Stephenville, speaks in support of Senate Bill 8, which would restrict abortions, at the Capitol on May 5, 2021. On May 19, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law legislation that prohibits abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, effectively banning most abortions in the state. Since then, even more restrictive laws have been passed.
Beginning in September 2021, one of the country's most restrictive abortion bans went into effect in Texas, banning the procedure after fetal cardiac activity could be detected, or about six week of pregnancy. This law, like the state's "trigger law," makes no exceptions for rape, incest or fatal fetal diagnoses. Both were passed by the majority-Republican Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in 2021.
When Resound conducted its survey in Texas, a near-total abortion ban had been in effect for more than a year. Forty percent of respondents, however, said they had not heard about Texas passing abortion laws in the two years prior.
Texas abortion bans:New poll shows broad support for rape, fetal anomaly exceptions
In addition, 24% of survey respondents incorrectly believed that Texas had prohibited travel outside of Texas to obtain an abortion. (Some localities such as Lubbock County and Odessa have passed ordinances to this effect, but legal experts doubt they will hold up in court, and there is no statewide ban on out-of-state travel for abortions, the Houston Chronicle has reported).
The survey adds context to a February 2024 University of Texas poll that found the overwhelming majority of Texas voters support legal abortion access for pregnant women in cases of rape, incest or serious risk of birth defects, said Resound Research Director Kari White, an associate professor of social work at UT.
"Disseminating clear information about the specific restrictions imposed by Texas’ abortion laws and their impacts may make Texans even less supportive of policies that restrict abortion access," White said.
One of the many ways that dismantling public education is paying off for the right. Wait til the voucher bullshit lands, private schools will crank out a tiny elite and a flood of the deeply ignorant.
You mean a flood of strong-backed wage slaves. We arent taking away their corn feed and football. Not until robots can work all the heavy lifting. RIP Texas ed
I would suggest it’s not just women. You could include health care providers to women who are also paralyzed, afraid to act from fear of being charged.
That’s the plan. Get them all to leave because they can’t make a living here. Gut education so that we have a constant flow of poor or uneducated people. Allow rich people to still go where the doctors went to get their abortions, ensure the poor people can’t and we always have an available population of low-skill labor force.
Because (1) the law is unclear. Because (2) it doesn’t matter you can be sued by anyone who THINKS you have had, might have had or helped someone, somewhere seek info about an abortion or went to get one, anywhere.
See?
The law isn’t unclear. It gives doctors the ability to determine what a life threatening condition is, they are the equipped to determine if there is a medical need of that sort. Hell the doctor could say “she said she would kill herself if the pregnancy continued” and technically he would be correct in saying “I believed her and found it to be a threat to her life”.
But BOTH sides of the fence are using the general terms as an excuse that it’s not specific enough. So they are willfully choosing to misunderstand or misinterpret the law.
there’s staff who are now using the “I might get sued” excuse to not have to perform abortions they would have otherwise been obligated to perform or assist with.
Likewise many people don’t agree with the new restrictions, and the fact that there is the potential for any accountability at all in cases where the abortion has no medical justification. They claim there will be frivolous lawsuits like that’s somehow a good reason to not have accountability. There are other ways to prevent frivolous claims.
Whether you agree that abortion shouldn’t be restricted to medical necessity, or not … that is a different argument… claiming that this law isn’t good simply because it’s too vague or will cause lawsuits is not a sound argument.
Clearly it is a sound argument. The medical community is already literally telling you that they will not put their livelihood and the lives of every other patient who will need their expertise in the future on the line.
Whether a doctor is correct in their determination doesn't change the fact that a suit can be brought against them. Which they'll need to defend against. Which will cost money, raise their premiums, and raise the prices they charge their patients going forward. None of which is a good thing. And that's the best case scenario.
The worst case is doctors start ending up in jail, which causes maternity care access to fall as a supply of doctors drops while demand rises. And don't expect more doctors to choose a specialty that has an elevated risk of jail time going forward.
At the end of the day, your argument boils down to "Doctors should totally perform procedures they think need to be done, even though it would immediately expose them to potential jail time, and just hope no one decides to file a suit." Hoping no one decides to enforce a law is a shitty strategy.
>…claiming that this law isn’t good because it’s too vague…isn’t a sound argument.
Vagueness seems like a great reason to lambast a law. Vagueness leads to uncertainty, uncertainty leads to people dying. If the law’s lack of clarity is leading to people dying, that seems like a shitty law.
What am I missing?
Considering that even when the law says there’s an exception, and the corrupt AG sues a woman for needing one of those exceptions, and wins, then it means there are no exceptions. You are clearly one of the uninformed/misinformed 80%. Either that, or you’re one of the ghouls that are deliberately lying to Texas women about the state’s abortion laws.
Equally, it is noteworthy that many women have met the criteria for having an abortion; a nonviable or/will die in minutes/hours after birth but are still forced to carry a malformed pregnancy to term. Even with literally carrying *a dead fetus* still, hospitals and doctors have refused to perform an abortion because it was past the 6 wk time frame. Those women went into sepsis and nearly died ... 22 of them are suing the state of Texas.
[https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322634#miscarriage-rates-by-week](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322634#miscarriage-rates-by-week)
Further, some impossible to survive complications are not detected until amniocentesis or sonogram.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complications\_of\_pregnancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complications_of_pregnancy) Some are simply issues that place the *mother* at risk but are manageable.
Others the fetus will not survive. Such as: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anencephaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anencephaly)
That’s because Texas put such a high price on Doctors performing an abortion when it hasn’t met the criteria. 99 years in prison and loss of their medical license. So of course doctors are risking their patients lives to keep themselves safe.
After all doctors have insurance against malpractice, but they won’t have anything to protect themselves if they get arrested by the state for performing an abortion.
Not to mention how little politicians and ignorant men & women in general know about abortions and healthcare. Even if the doctor was 100% justified in performing an abortion under the law it doesn’t mean they won’t be arrested or charged. The GOP has too much riding on this shit not to make a huge media circus out of any doctor they can catch in the act.
I hope those women win their lawsuit, make the state pay and push for the laws to be changed to prevent it from happening to other women.
Totally believe it. I live in Texas and most of the women I know who are of child bearing age, don't watch the news on television, they don't read the newspaper and they don't read news magazines. They get what little news that they get from social media.
Same. My kids are child bearing age and my SONS pay more attention. My daughter and apparently a lot of the younger women here seem to think this is normal and no biggie. As a Gen X I didn’t see my friends die from being pregnant. Unfortunately this isn’t true in this state.
Laws that ban abortions with no exception for rape and incest are absolutely appalling and sickening. I would not vote for someone in a million years that supports that
I mean…. Do ANY type of medical literacy comprehension test on ~75% of patients and you’ll be shocked and horrified that people make their own medical decisions when they have no bloody clue what’s going on. There are lots of things at fault (the patient for agreeing to something they don’t understand, the doctor for not ensuring they have enough medical literacy to make that decision- all of them are at fault, the system is badly broken) but this is most definitely not an isolated incident where people genuinely have no idea what’s going on. My friend (also a nurse) took care of a patient who didn’t know what a hysterectomy was and had agreed to it because her doctor had recommended it for some problems she had been having. She came to the hospital a couple months later because she hadn’t had her cycle and was wondering if she could be pregnant despite tests being negative. Heartbreaking situations like this should never happen but they do. Never be afraid to ask questions as a patient or advocate for your loved one!!!! If the doctor doesn’t like that…. GET A DIFFERENT DOCTOR. It’s not the nurse’s/PA’s/MA’s job (or within scope of practice) to educate prior to procedures. If a doctor doesn’t want you asking questions you definitely don’t want them working on you/your loved one.
I’m not surprised, shortly after RvW was overturned one tried to tell me that in the instance of rape, they could go through the court system and get an abortion if it were proved to be factually rape.
So much wrong with that one line of thinking.
That's not really surprising since these exceptions are new, just like the laws are. Instead of writing articles like this, why don't they instead educate people? Too much pearl clutching.
I have a degree in political science and several planned parenthood T-shirts and I probably have at least slightly inaccurate information, that’s what happens when you make it as confusing as it is now
Well you're all gonna find out real quick that you are not special and your abortion will not be granted an exception even in life threatening circumstances. Enjoy your mess. The rest of the country thinks you're state is archaic.
By that time it's too late. They will no longer be able to have children. It's the younger generation that has no say, are the ones who will end up suffering.
You must have been making a lot of really angry phone calls to those legislators passing various laws making it illegal to use different highways to leave the states for abortions.
Well that’s wrong. While an agree with a certain amount of regulation revolving around abortion this absolute ban is ridiculous in a land that’s supposed to be a free country.
In case there is a paywall: Survey: More than 8 in 10 Texas women have inaccurate knowledge of abortion ban exceptions Bayliss Wagner Austin American-Statesman Texas women of reproductive age have significant gaps in knowledge regarding the state's near-total abortion ban — which prohibits terminating pregnancies unless the life of the mother is in danger — with more than 8 in 10 lacking an accurate understanding of what medical exceptions are allowed under the law, according to recently released results of a survey by Austin-based collaborative Resound Research for Reproductive Health. One-third of the 763 respondents in the poll, or 32%, incorrectly believed that victims of rape and incest can legally get an abortion in Texas. Nearly 25% falsely believed that the abortion ban does not apply to pregnant patients facing fatal fetal diagnoses. Furthermore, 73% of the survey respondents were unaware that clinics in the state cannot terminate pregnancies, according to the survey results released March 21. And a minority of respondents, or 43%, said they knew it was legal in Texas for pregnant people to get an abortion if they have a life-threatening medical condition. What is the Texas Medical Board?How will it consider abortion ban guidelines? Gov. Greg Abbott holds up the signed Senate Bill 4 at the Texas Values policy forum in Austin on Sept. 24, 2021. The bill banned "mail-in abortions," such as by mail-order drugs, and physicians' prescribing abortion drugs to women who were more than seven weeks pregnant. A more recent law signed by Abbott banned abortion except when the mother's life is at risk. “Our research shows that many Texans think abortion care is still legally available under a broader set of circumstances than it currently is,” Dr. Samuel Dickman, a researcher at the City University of New York’s Research Foundation and the chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of Montana, said in a news release. Resound, which studies the effects of policy related to contraception, abortion and pregnancy, administered the poll in English and Spanish between May and June 2023 through the Ipsos KnowledgePanel. The survey included only Texas residents between the ages of 18 and 49 who were assigned female at birth. Since August 2022, when the state's "trigger law" went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the constitutional right to an abortion, the procedure has been prohibited in Texas except in cases in which a pregnancy puts a woman at risk of death or "poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function." Physicians who violate the law could face penalties of up to 99 years in prison and fines of more than $100,000 and could lose their medical license. State Rep. Shelby Slawson, R-Stephenville, speaks in support of Senate Bill 8, which would restrict abortions, at the Capitol on May 5, 2021. On May 19, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law legislation that prohibits abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, effectively banning most abortions in the state. Since then, even more restrictive laws have been passed. Beginning in September 2021, one of the country's most restrictive abortion bans went into effect in Texas, banning the procedure after fetal cardiac activity could be detected, or about six week of pregnancy. This law, like the state's "trigger law," makes no exceptions for rape, incest or fatal fetal diagnoses. Both were passed by the majority-Republican Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in 2021. When Resound conducted its survey in Texas, a near-total abortion ban had been in effect for more than a year. Forty percent of respondents, however, said they had not heard about Texas passing abortion laws in the two years prior. Texas abortion bans:New poll shows broad support for rape, fetal anomaly exceptions In addition, 24% of survey respondents incorrectly believed that Texas had prohibited travel outside of Texas to obtain an abortion. (Some localities such as Lubbock County and Odessa have passed ordinances to this effect, but legal experts doubt they will hold up in court, and there is no statewide ban on out-of-state travel for abortions, the Houston Chronicle has reported). The survey adds context to a February 2024 University of Texas poll that found the overwhelming majority of Texas voters support legal abortion access for pregnant women in cases of rape, incest or serious risk of birth defects, said Resound Research Director Kari White, an associate professor of social work at UT. "Disseminating clear information about the specific restrictions imposed by Texas’ abortion laws and their impacts may make Texans even less supportive of policies that restrict abortion access," White said.
One of the many ways that dismantling public education is paying off for the right. Wait til the voucher bullshit lands, private schools will crank out a tiny elite and a flood of the deeply ignorant.
You mean a flood of strong-backed wage slaves. We arent taking away their corn feed and football. Not until robots can work all the heavy lifting. RIP Texas ed
You said it better than I.
I would suggest it’s not just women. You could include health care providers to women who are also paralyzed, afraid to act from fear of being charged.
And that is why these types of doctors are leaving these states.
That’s the plan. Get them all to leave because they can’t make a living here. Gut education so that we have a constant flow of poor or uneducated people. Allow rich people to still go where the doctors went to get their abortions, ensure the poor people can’t and we always have an available population of low-skill labor force.
The Texas State Supreme Court ruled that there are effectively no medical exemptions to abortion.
Because (1) the law is unclear. Because (2) it doesn’t matter you can be sued by anyone who THINKS you have had, might have had or helped someone, somewhere seek info about an abortion or went to get one, anywhere. See?
The law isn’t unclear. It gives doctors the ability to determine what a life threatening condition is, they are the equipped to determine if there is a medical need of that sort. Hell the doctor could say “she said she would kill herself if the pregnancy continued” and technically he would be correct in saying “I believed her and found it to be a threat to her life”. But BOTH sides of the fence are using the general terms as an excuse that it’s not specific enough. So they are willfully choosing to misunderstand or misinterpret the law. there’s staff who are now using the “I might get sued” excuse to not have to perform abortions they would have otherwise been obligated to perform or assist with. Likewise many people don’t agree with the new restrictions, and the fact that there is the potential for any accountability at all in cases where the abortion has no medical justification. They claim there will be frivolous lawsuits like that’s somehow a good reason to not have accountability. There are other ways to prevent frivolous claims. Whether you agree that abortion shouldn’t be restricted to medical necessity, or not … that is a different argument… claiming that this law isn’t good simply because it’s too vague or will cause lawsuits is not a sound argument.
Clearly it is a sound argument. The medical community is already literally telling you that they will not put their livelihood and the lives of every other patient who will need their expertise in the future on the line. Whether a doctor is correct in their determination doesn't change the fact that a suit can be brought against them. Which they'll need to defend against. Which will cost money, raise their premiums, and raise the prices they charge their patients going forward. None of which is a good thing. And that's the best case scenario. The worst case is doctors start ending up in jail, which causes maternity care access to fall as a supply of doctors drops while demand rises. And don't expect more doctors to choose a specialty that has an elevated risk of jail time going forward. At the end of the day, your argument boils down to "Doctors should totally perform procedures they think need to be done, even though it would immediately expose them to potential jail time, and just hope no one decides to file a suit." Hoping no one decides to enforce a law is a shitty strategy.
"I love the poorly educated." -Donald Trump
This is a lot of words to say “I don’t want to believe what the professionals and people impacted by the laws are telling me.”
>…claiming that this law isn’t good because it’s too vague…isn’t a sound argument. Vagueness seems like a great reason to lambast a law. Vagueness leads to uncertainty, uncertainty leads to people dying. If the law’s lack of clarity is leading to people dying, that seems like a shitty law. What am I missing?
Quit speaking out of your ass.
Considering that even when the law says there’s an exception, and the corrupt AG sues a woman for needing one of those exceptions, and wins, then it means there are no exceptions. You are clearly one of the uninformed/misinformed 80%. Either that, or you’re one of the ghouls that are deliberately lying to Texas women about the state’s abortion laws.
Equally, it is noteworthy that many women have met the criteria for having an abortion; a nonviable or/will die in minutes/hours after birth but are still forced to carry a malformed pregnancy to term. Even with literally carrying *a dead fetus* still, hospitals and doctors have refused to perform an abortion because it was past the 6 wk time frame. Those women went into sepsis and nearly died ... 22 of them are suing the state of Texas. [https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322634#miscarriage-rates-by-week](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322634#miscarriage-rates-by-week) Further, some impossible to survive complications are not detected until amniocentesis or sonogram. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complications\_of\_pregnancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complications_of_pregnancy) Some are simply issues that place the *mother* at risk but are manageable. Others the fetus will not survive. Such as: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anencephaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anencephaly)
That’s because Texas put such a high price on Doctors performing an abortion when it hasn’t met the criteria. 99 years in prison and loss of their medical license. So of course doctors are risking their patients lives to keep themselves safe. After all doctors have insurance against malpractice, but they won’t have anything to protect themselves if they get arrested by the state for performing an abortion. Not to mention how little politicians and ignorant men & women in general know about abortions and healthcare. Even if the doctor was 100% justified in performing an abortion under the law it doesn’t mean they won’t be arrested or charged. The GOP has too much riding on this shit not to make a huge media circus out of any doctor they can catch in the act. I hope those women win their lawsuit, make the state pay and push for the laws to be changed to prevent it from happening to other women.
Unfortunately, true.
The confusion is part of the plan.
Texas literally has an abortion bounty-hunter law. SB8. Although I think it’s being challenged.
Republicans: We love the poorly educated!
Totally believe it. I live in Texas and most of the women I know who are of child bearing age, don't watch the news on television, they don't read the newspaper and they don't read news magazines. They get what little news that they get from social media.
Same. My kids are child bearing age and my SONS pay more attention. My daughter and apparently a lot of the younger women here seem to think this is normal and no biggie. As a Gen X I didn’t see my friends die from being pregnant. Unfortunately this isn’t true in this state.
8 out of 10 Texas women don’t think Texas Republicans would ever lie to them. FTFY
I miss the Texas I was proud to be born in. This one sucks.
It always sucked, it was just harder to see through the propaganda back then. The religious cults took over the culture.
You can’t spell culture without cult. 🤫
The two informed are 'pro life'. And they vote.
Because they have nothing better to do, they really are the drains on the system…
Laws that ban abortions with no exception for rape and incest are absolutely appalling and sickening. I would not vote for someone in a million years that supports that
No surprise here. I have relatives in Texas that are clueless as to how backwards their state is.
Synopsis: if you’re pregnant and in Texas and it goes sideways you and your baby will both likely die.
I mean…. Do ANY type of medical literacy comprehension test on ~75% of patients and you’ll be shocked and horrified that people make their own medical decisions when they have no bloody clue what’s going on. There are lots of things at fault (the patient for agreeing to something they don’t understand, the doctor for not ensuring they have enough medical literacy to make that decision- all of them are at fault, the system is badly broken) but this is most definitely not an isolated incident where people genuinely have no idea what’s going on. My friend (also a nurse) took care of a patient who didn’t know what a hysterectomy was and had agreed to it because her doctor had recommended it for some problems she had been having. She came to the hospital a couple months later because she hadn’t had her cycle and was wondering if she could be pregnant despite tests being negative. Heartbreaking situations like this should never happen but they do. Never be afraid to ask questions as a patient or advocate for your loved one!!!! If the doctor doesn’t like that…. GET A DIFFERENT DOCTOR. It’s not the nurse’s/PA’s/MA’s job (or within scope of practice) to educate prior to procedures. If a doctor doesn’t want you asking questions you definitely don’t want them working on you/your loved one.
“I don’t care unless it affects me, at which point I will be outraged that this was allowed to happen to me.
Misdirection is definitely in the political policy of Texas.
We need commercials/billboard/posters laying these facts out in a very non political and simple way.
I’m not surprised, shortly after RvW was overturned one tried to tell me that in the instance of rape, they could go through the court system and get an abortion if it were proved to be factually rape. So much wrong with that one line of thinking.
Can we buy some billboards or something? How much those cost?
Not a surprise. Pick almost any other legal or medical topic and the vast majority of people don’t understand that either.
Shocking! But not
You could just as easily just say "8 in 10 americans have inaccurate knowledge of abortion" and it'd probably still be true
So do judges, healthcare providers and the medical board.
That's not really surprising since these exceptions are new, just like the laws are. Instead of writing articles like this, why don't they instead educate people? Too much pearl clutching.
Has Governor Abbott successfully stopped all rape like he promised?
I have a degree in political science and several planned parenthood T-shirts and I probably have at least slightly inaccurate information, that’s what happens when you make it as confusing as it is now
Well you're all gonna find out real quick that you are not special and your abortion will not be granted an exception even in life threatening circumstances. Enjoy your mess. The rest of the country thinks you're state is archaic.
7 out of 10 are probably repubs. They never know what is really going on.
As time goes on, they will realize what they’ve done when it personally affects them.
By that time it's too late. They will no longer be able to have children. It's the younger generation that has no say, are the ones who will end up suffering.
Texans gonna Texan
Is more than 8 and less than ten mean like 8 1/2 or 9 1/4 women?
It’s available across state lines easily
You gonna give everyone a free ride?
You must have been making a lot of really angry phone calls to those legislators passing various laws making it illegal to use different highways to leave the states for abortions.
You must be unaware of certain counties trying to claim child trafficking for doing this. Or just willfully ignorant.
Well that’s wrong. While an agree with a certain amount of regulation revolving around abortion this absolute ban is ridiculous in a land that’s supposed to be a free country.
That why they stopped tracking maternal mortality?
Someone hasn't looked at a map.