Abortion in Texas: ABC13 town hall focuses on how ban is impacting women
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- It's been nearly five months since Roe v Wade was overturned.
Abortion is now banned in nearly all cases here in Texas, and Thursday night, we hosted an Action 13 town hall digging deeper into the impact the new law is having.
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, Texas was already under the nation's strictest abortion law, banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.
While a June poll from The University of Texas at Austin found Texans overwhelmingly oppose a complete ban on abortion, our November election didn't reflect that, with anti-abortion Republicans sweeping races statewide.
Yet this is an issue that affects everybody, and chances are, you know somebody who has had an abortion.
Nearly one in four American woman, about 24% in all, get an abortion before turning 45, according to an estimate by The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights group.
Throughout the town hall Thursday, reporter Pooja Lodhia pressed our panel for answers to some of your most pressing questions, including what we might expect to see when the Texas Legislature meets again in January.
We also heard from two mothers, who shared their own experiences with abortion, about what the ban means for Texas women.
Texas' abortion law makes no exceptions, aside from the health of the mother.
In an exclusive interview with ABC13, Gov. Greg Abbott said he expects language changes are coming to clarify Texas abortion law, but did not answer directly when asked whether he would sign legislation allowing for exceptions in the cases of rape and incest.
