Could doctors in Texas face a possible death sentence for performing certain abortions?
That the question that the Texas District and County Attorneys Association has raised as an unintended consequence of legislation passed by the Texas Legislature in 2005. The Association raised the issue shortly after the legislative session, and it seemed to genereate little interest or concern. The Association has continued to raise the question in CLE sessions for Texas prosecutors, however, and that has caused a legislator to seek clarification from the Texas Attorney General through the office's formal opinion process.
We have reporting from the Austin American-Statesman. LINK
House State Affairs Committee Chairman David Swinford, R-Dumas, doesn't think so, but he's concerned that's how a statewide prosecutors group is interpreting legislation passed last year. Swinford has asked Attorney General Greg Abbott to weigh in with a formal opinion.
Coverage from the Dallas Morning News. LINK
By defining a fetus as "an individual" in 2003, and then making it a criminal act in 2005 to perform certain abortions, legislators might have unintentionally created a scenario in which physicians could be charged with the death of a child younger than 6 – a crime subject to capital punishment, according to the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
The group has traveled throughout the state to educate prosecutors about changes made in criminal laws in the last regular legislative session and has discussed the abortion situation in its materials as an "expansion of capital murder" and a new way "of committing capital murder."
And coverage from the Houston Chronicle. LINK
Swinford said he disagrees with the interpretation by the Texas District and County Attorneys Association because there is no evidence that the Legislature intended such a result from changes it made to the law governing doctors' conduct last year.
He said the changes were intended to provide appropriate criminal penalties for a physician's failure to comply with restrictions on third-trimester abortions or to obtain the consent of a minor's parent, but "certainly not to subject a physician to prosecution for capital murder."
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