How Texas Republicans Partnered With a "Pro Life" Group to Kill a Bill of Equal Protection for Preborn Babies in Texas
You may find this an odd headline to be published on the website of a company that makes and sells wristwatches, but the thing you've got to know about Wasson Watch Co. is that we are Christians. I (Paul Brown), and my business partner (Travis Rudolph) happily acknowledge that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and that includes our business. Wasson Watch Co. belongs to Jesus, and as stewards of his business, we strive to manage it in such a way that it honors and glorifies him. Now read the article, and take action. Refuse to sit idly and apathetically in the face of the raw evil we uncover here.
In addition to running Wasson Watch Co., I'm also the Director of Policy for Abolish Abortion Texas. In that capacity I work hard with the goal of providing equal protection under the law for preborn children through the passage and adoption of legislation that would treat abortion like murder for all involved parties.
You may be surprised to find that abortion is still legal in Texas, and every other state. The current laws do provide penalties for doctors or other secondary parties that might conduct an abortion, but Section 19.06 of the Texas Criminal Code explicitly provides total legal immunity for the mother who conducts that abortion. That means that if she pays someone else to kill her preborn baby, the other person could be charged, but she could not be. This is kind of weird, considering that if a mother paid a hitman to kill her born child, she would absolutely be prosecuted. The Pro Life groups and politicians who wrote the current laws would all say without exception that human life begins at the moment of fertilization, and has the same value and dignity as humans that have already been born, but they very purposefully chose not to treat that preborn life the same.
There's more.
Because the doctor or other party could be charged for conducting an abortion, there are very few folks willing to carry out abortions anymore. So, what have moms who want to murder their prenatal children in Texas started doing? They order abortion pills online, which are shipped from out-of-state, and which they (the moms) self administer in order to induce abortion. Since the sending party is out-of-state, they are outside of Texas jurisdiction and cannot be prosecuted. The current law does not allow for the prosecution of the moms who self-induce the abortion, so there's no legal method to deter the abortion, and no justice for the murdered babies.
You might think (or hope) that this is very rare. It's not. There are a number of different available studies and estimates out there, but WeCount reports that 29,220 Texas women conducted abortions using mail order pills in the one-year period spanning from July 2023 to June 2024.
Mail-order-pills are sadly not the only method being used to murder prenatal Texans. Many women choose to travel out-of-state to kill their babies at brick-and-mortar locations. Guttmacher reports 34,540 Texas women traveled out-of-state in 2023 to get abortions.
This brings the total number of estimated abortions amongst Texas women to 63,760 annually, a significant increase from what it was prior to the SCOTUS Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, and the institution of the current abortion restrictions in Texas and other states.
Thankfully, there are lawmakers in Texas who care enough to do something about it. Two years ago I met Brent Money. He was running for State House of Representatives in Texas House District 2. After lengthy conversations, and careful prayer and consideration on his part, he agreed to author a bill of equal protection for preborn babies, which would remove the exception from the homicide code, and would treat abortion like murder for all parties. He didn't just decide to author it. He made it his number one priority for the legislative session. He worked hard to get support from other legislators, and ultimately secured 20 co-authors (some of whom have now dropped off, but we'll get to that later), and one joint author (Andy Hopper). Hopper had actually agreed to support the bill before the session started, and would have gladly authored the bill if Money hadn't. Other co-authors who agreed to author or co-author the bill before the session started include Daniel Alders, Janis Holt, Mitch Little, David Lowe, Shelley Luther, Mike Olcott, Keresa Richardson, and Wes Virdell.
The very first bill Representative Money filed was HB 2197 relating to the protection of an unborn child's rights and criminal liability and justification for prohibited conduct, and it would have accomplished exactly what we wanted: Equal protection under the law for preborn children in Texas.
The bill was filed January 29, just two weeks after Money and his colleagues were sworn in and the 89th legislature began on January 14, 2025. However, the Speaker of the Texas House, Dustin Burrows, dragged his feet and didn't get the bill assigned to a committee until two months after the session began. On March 14 it was assigned to the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, chaired by Representative John Smithee.
Money sprang into action, and quickly began lobbying Smithee for a hearing. In early April Smithee told Money that he would give the bill a hearing in the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee on 4/22, and that it would be officially announced on 4/17.
As an aside, a committee hearing is a very important step for any piece of legislation. A bill can simply die in committee if it's never given a hearing, and that's what happens to many bills. Ultimately the committee chair has total discretion over whether a bill gets a hearing or not. Furthermore, the chair can give a bill a hearing and then simply not give it a vote, and the bill still dies. Only if the chair gives it a vote, and then the bill passes that vote does it move to the next step, which is assigned to Calendars, who may then assign it a date for the House Floor, and so on.
So we were all surprised when we woke up on Wednesday, April 16th to discover that Smithee had moved the bill into a newly created Subcommittee late the night before. This was going to delay the hearing of our bill in the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, and it happened without warning or discussion, despite Smithee's previous agreement to hear the bill on the 22nd.
We kicked into high gear, and mobilized hundreds of volunteers to contact Smithee and ask him to move the bill back to Criminal Jurisprudence and give it a hearing on the 22nd as previously agreed. After some initial resistance, he ultimately conceded, and the hearing in Criminal Jurisprudence for the 22nd was announced on Thursday, 4/17.
But that's not the only thing that happened on 4/17. That Thursday ended up being quite an eventful day. The House met to discuss and vote on the calendar laid out by the Local & Consent Calendars Committee, including House Resolution 236, in memory of Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood. Cecile Richards was president of Planned Parenthood for 12 years. She has presided over the deaths of millions of preborn children in the United States, and the House was set to vote on a resolution to honor her as follows:
RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives of the 89th Texas
Legislature hereby pay tribute to the memory of Cecile Richards and
extend sincere condolences to all who mourn her passing; and, be it
further
RESOLVED, That an official copy of this resolution be
prepared for her family and that when the Texas House of
Representatives adjourns this day, it do so in memory of Cecile
Richards.
To be clear, the Texas House of Representatives has been controlled by Republicans for decades. The Speaker of the House of Republican, Dustin Burrows. The Local & Consent Calendars Committee, which voted unanimously in favor of including this resolution on the calendar they advanced to the House floor, is majority Republican, and chaired by Representative Jared Patterson, who was appointed by Speaker Burrows.
In other words, a full suite of Republican House leadership was ok with this bill, and were ready to just ram it through along with all the other calendar items, and they would have, if a few courageous conservatives in the House had not stood up to oppose it.
But they did stand in opposition. Several bold conservatives such as Nate Schatzline, and our own bill author and co-authors (Brent Money, Andy Hopper, Mitch Little, Wes Virdell, and Mike Olcott) were firing on all cylinders to oppose the resolution, despite mocking and even false accusations by some of their colleagues.
In the end the conservatives prevailed, and the House leadership opted to pull the calendar back so they could remove the resolution, but if it had not been for the resolute resistance of a handful of conservative legislators, the Texas House would have absolutely honored Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards.
In contrast with these legislators' courageous opposition, the following individuals did not utter a peep against the resolution: Speaker Burrows, Criminal Jurisprudence Chair John Smithee, and President of Texas Alliance for Life, Joe Pojman.
All of this is notable because of what happens next.
Leading up to the hearing for the equal protection bill, dozens of individuals were traveling to the Capitol from across Texas, and even from other states in order to support the bill, some with to testify publicly, and others to simply stand with us in solidarity.
On Monday evening, April 21st, the night before the scheduled hearing, Chair Smithee called our bill author, Brent Money, and yelled at him for authoring the bill, calling it stupid. He said he was getting pressure from the Speaker to pull the bill, and at around 7:00 p.m., with no public notice or explanation, he pulled the bill from the hearing schedule.
To piece together what happened, we have to rewind a bit. Earlier in the day on the 21st we received word that Texas Alliance for Life (TAL) was sending out alerts to their email list, asking people to call their legislators to oppose our bill.
We knew that TAL opposed our bill already. They had expressed that in multiple ways in the past. Indeed, they have opposed most meaningful attempts to restrict abortion in Texas over the last decade, including our own.
But, in addition to phone calls from some folks who probably responded to the alert, we realized it was very likely that Pojman was likely speaking directly with Speaker Burrows and Chair Smithee directly in order to get them to cancel the hearing.
TAL also posted about it on X:
Legislative Alert: Oppose HB 2197, a bill to criminalize abortion for women—including the death penalty. It would deter women from seeking help & make it harder to stop illegal abortion providers.
— TexasAllianceforLife (@TXAlliance4Life) April 21, 2025
Urge your state rep to oppose it TODAY: https://t.co/1ndEyxOqQA #TxLege
They went on to ask people to submit written testimony in opposition to the bill.
Although some people did respond, we know the bigger impact likely came from Pojman's probable conversations with Burrows and Smithee. Some of this we can just tell from the available numbers. For instance, out of 325 written testimonies that were submitted on HB 2197, 301 (93%) were in favor of the bill, while only 24 (7%) were opposed. The Grassroots support equal protection for preborn children. The entrenched elites oppose it.
And the elites opposed this bill without any grounds to do so. Not only is the grassroots support for this bill substantive right now, but it has been evident for the better part of the last decade. It is currently Principle number 2 on the Texas Republican Party Platform, and has been part of the Party's platform since 2016.
But, it gets worse.
Remember how the House leadership tried to honor former Planned Parenthood president, Cecile Richards, less than a week prior? Well, it looks like they ended up honoring Planned Parenthood after all.
That's right. Planned Parenthood celebrated the victory of defeating HB 2197. Texas Alliance for Life and Republican House Leadership worked WITH Planned Parenthood to defeat a bill that would provide equal protection under the law for preborn children.
You may be very confused. Why is a pro life organization opposing a bill of equal protection for preborn babies in conjunction with Planned Parenthood???
It's pretty simple. It's because TAL is pro choice. They have opposed nearly every meaningful restriction on abortion in Texas in the last decade. But even if that were not so, their opposition to equal protection for the preborn makes them pro choice. Even if they supported other restrictions, they oppose legal restrictions that would prevent the mother from conducting an abortion on herself. In fact, they protect her legal ability to do so. In other words, they support a woman's right to choose an abortion.
It's sickening. It's disgusting. It's vile, it's evil, and it's utterly reprehensible.
There's plenty of blame to go around here.
Texas Alliance for Life is an evil, pro choice organization masquerading as a pro life organization led by an evil, pro choice man (Joe Pojman). Every session they work hard to oppose new restrictions on abortion, and every election cycle they oppose committed abolitionist and pro life Republican candidates, while supporting Republican candidates who really don't prioritize the issue at all. Nothing they have ever done has done any good for preborn babies in Texas, yet they soak up over half a million dollars in revenue each year. Undoubtedly, some of the people who give to TAL know exactly what they're doing, but I am sure there are plenty of well-meaning folks who innocently believe they are giving to an organization that is literally working hard to protect preborn babies. If TAL had not intentionally pulled out all the stops to oppose our bill, it's very likely that it would have had a hearing, and maybe even been passed out of committee.
Speaker Dustin Burrows is just the latest in a long line of Republican Speakers who are frankly not very conservative. Texas has a $2.6 TRILLION economy, the 8th largest in the world. There are many wealthy individuals, companies, and other groups who have a strong interest in influencing Texas laws. They work together to support a large percentage of both Republican and Democrat lawmakers in Texas, who get an annual salary of $7,200 + per diem. Essentially, if you're not independently wealthy, or have another solid revenue stream that allows you to be gone all the time, it's financially impossible to be a Texas lawmaker without "help" from somebody. Burrows is a RINO (Republican In Name Only), and he will generally oppose most conservative issues, but through proxies such as Committee Chairs, and through delay tactics. We know that Speaker Burrows directly contacted Chair Smithee and expressed his desire to pull the bill. How much of the influence was from TAL, and how much was from Burrows is unknown, but it's likely that Burrows was also influenced by TAL too, so you can see how the chain of events unfolded.
Committee Chair John Smithee is ultimately the one who pulled the bill from the hearing. He is the one who told Money that the hearing would take place. He is the one who officially put it on the schedule. And he is the only who took it off the schedule. Regardless of what anyone else wanted to him to do, or told him to do, he is the most directly responsible for killing the bill (technically it's not dead yet, but he will have killed it if he doesn't end up scheduling another hearing for it).
None of these parties deserve to be in the positions of influence they are in today. TAL should be dismantled entirely, and Pojman should never come within ten feet of politics again. Burrows should not be a House Speaker or member of the Texas House, and Smithee should not be a Chair or House member either.
Let me be clear about the reality of what happened here.
Administratively, they killed a bill.
In reality, they killed at least 50,000 more Texas babies over the next two years.
And all they had to do was give it a hearing and a vote. But, in fact, blocking that wasn't even enough for them.
As I write this, TAL is still working to get folks who have co-authored the bill to remove their names. Several have removed their names so far. Pojman is committed to doing everything possible to eliminate any risk of achieving equal protection for the preborn now or in the future.
To say I am incensed is an understatement. This is an absolute miscarriage of justice.
The Rwanda Genocide took place in 1994, when I was still a kid. I remember hearing about it and being aghast. "How could this happen?" "Why didn't somebody do something?" "What kind of people would slaughter their neighbors like that?"
It seemed so far-off, so foreign, so impossible to imagine happening here.
But it is IS happening here, right now. It has been happening for over 50 years. Despite some of the news that may have told you that it's even banned in some states, it's not. Every state where abortion is restricted has legal loopholes like Texas does. And whatever we may be doing about it, we are not doing enough. There's more we can do. In fact, there are some very specific things you can do, which I have listed below in order of importance:
- Call Chair John Smithee at (512) 463-0702 and email him at john.smithee@house.texas.gov, and express your disappointment that he pulled the bill, and ask him to schedule a hearing.
- Spread the word that John Smithee is a pro-choice Republican who killed the bill of equal protection for the preborn in Texas. You can tell your friends, post on social media, share this article, whatever. Get the word out.
- If you live in Texas call your State House Representative and ask them to co-author HB 2197. If you don't know who that is, you can find out here: https://wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home
- If item 1 doesn't happen, donate to whoever runs against Smithee in the Republican Primary. Consider volunteering for them.
- Don't give any money to Texas Alliance for Life and expose them by posting the truth about them on social media. Make sure the people you know who might be giving to them also do not give to them.
- Donate and subscribe to the email list of Abolish Abortion Texas. We need all the help we can get.
This is probably all pretty discouraging news. It's a betrayal of the highest order, and the ultimate victims of this betrayal are innocent, defenseless preborn babies. We should be inspired to act, but we should also be encouraged by the goodness of God. No matter what happens, we can count of the fact that he is good, and he is in control. Abortion will be abolished ultimately. I pray that this happens sooner rather than later. But all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and someday he will abolish all abortion for all time.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
