page_title: Abortion in Texas
section_title: rights views and activities
hierarchical_section_title: Abortion in Texas / rights views and activities
caption_attribution_description: img_4097
context_page_description: Abortion in Texas is legal. In the South Central United States 52% of people polled by Pew Research Center believed that abortion should be illegal in most cases. Abortion was illegal in the state in 1900, with a therapeutic exception put in place in 1950. In the early 2000s, the state passed a parental notification law. In 2007, the state passed a mandatory ultrasound bill, and then started funding women's reproductive health programs that did not include abortion services and tried to cut off any state funding to facilities for reproductive services if they offered abortion services. Attempts to ban abortion in all cases were underway by 2007. By 2009, the legislature was actively trying to defund Planned Parenthood. Fetal heartbeat ban attempts were underway by 2013 when Phil King introduced such a bill on July 18, 2013, in the wake of Rick Perry signing Texas Senate Bill 5 into law. On February 7, 2019, Briscoe Cain, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, introduced a fetal heartbeat bill entitled the Texas Heartbeat Bill. It was jointly authored by Representatives Phil King, Dan Flynn, Tan Parker, and Rick Miller.
caption: Women's March Austin Texas 2017
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