Thousands Expected At Texas Capitol As Sweeping Abortion Bill Returns [View all]

[Purveyor]

Thousands of Texans on both sides of the abortion divide will descend on the state capitol in Austin on Monday, at the start of a special legislative session designed to pass a bill that would sharply restrict abortion services in the state.

More than 5,000 people have signed up to a “Stand With Texas Women” rally, to be staged at noon on the steps of the Capitol. The rally is being billed as a continuation of the dramatic scenes last week, when 400 pro-choice advocates staged a loud protest in the state senate chamber following Wendy Davis’s epic 10-hour filibuster that blocked the controversial bill, SB 5.

Anti-abortionists will stage their own rally in support of the new legislative session that the Texas governor, Rick Perry, called shortly after Davis’s filibuster ended. Some 700 pro-life campaigners have signed up to the rally called by Texas Alliance for Life.

Though emotions are running high even before the new special session begins, there is unlikely to be a quick resolution to the bitter dispute as the Texas assembly will need time to reprocess a revised bill. That bill, reconfigured as House Bill 2 and Senate Bill 9, has already been filed in the assembly but its text has yet to be made public. The terms of the revised bill are likely to be the same in all important points as the one that fell last week. It will limit abortion to 20 weeks, force the mothballing of at least 37 out of the state’s 42 active abortion clinics, and make it more difficult for doctors to operate.

MORE...

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/30/thousands-expected-at-texas-capitol-as-sweeping-abortion-bill-returns/