By: ELEANOR DEARMAN
“SB 8 represents an attempt by the Legislature to protect unborn babies from abortion even before Roe is overturned,” said Joe Pojman, Texas Alliance for Life’s executive director. “For now, that law remains in effect. Regardless of whether the courts allow that law to continue, we hope the Supreme Court will reverse the terrible Roe v. Wade precedent so states can completely protect unborn babies from the tragedy of abortion.”
By: ELEANOR KLIBANOFF
“We’ve had a lot of progress just since 2000,” said Joe Pojman, the executive director of Texas Alliance for Life. “Texas has been playing its usual outsized role on this issue. We’ve been on the vanguard of advancing pro-life laws that have challenged the precedents in federal courts.”
By: Emily Caldwell and BeLynn Hollers
In a statement by Texas Alliance for Life, the organization notes that “neither the United States Supreme Court nor the state district court considered the constitutionality of a pre-viability abortion ban, only the procedural questions related to the citizen enforcement of SB 8.”
“Regardless of whether the courts allow that law to continue, we hope the Supreme Court will reverse the terrible Roe v. Wade precedent so states can completely protect unborn babies from the tragedy of abortion. That could happen by next June when the Court rules on the Dobbs case, whose oral arguments they heard last week,” executive director Joe Pojman said.
By: Melanie Torre
Meanwhile, opponents of abortion access are hoping to achieve the opposite.
“We’re putting a lot of hope in an entirely separate law and a separate court case,” said Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life. Pojman is talking about is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—another case before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging a Mississippi law banning abortion at 15 weeks.
“If they rule to completely overturn Roe v. Wade, or partly overturn it, Texas has another law that the legislature passed and the governor signed last spring,” said Pojman.
Texas’s Human Life Protection Act would be triggered into effect in the event Roe v. Wade is overturned. The act would close the six-week window currently part of the state’s SB 8 and essentially outlaw any abortion procedure.
By: Emily Caldwell
Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, was outside the court Wednesday morning and said he was excited to see both younger and more female anti-abortion demonstrators.
“From our side, I was quite impressed and heartened to see a fewer percentage of the people who were people like me, who’ve been involved for decades, older people,” Pojman said. “There’s just a lot of younger people in their 30s and 20s and a lot of college students, and probably more women than men. I was very heartened by all of that.”
Pojman said that from listening to the oral arguments, it seems clear to him that this Mississippi case is not just about a 15-week ban — it’s about whether Roe should stand at all. Pojman said it’s hard to know what the justices are thinking, but that he can imagine a post-Roe future in Texas.
“I can definitely imagine a world in June of 2022, in which five and maybe six [justices] vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade, but I am not certain of that,” Pojman said. “But if that does happen, we have the trigger ban, The Human Life Protection Act, that will be ready to go into effect, and we also have tremendous resources for women with unplanned pregnancies that are available.”
By: Roni Caryn Rabin
Supporters of the law say their goal is to save the life of every embryo, regardless of the circumstances of conception.
“We never advocate taking a life of an unborn child unless it is necessary to protect the life of a woman,” said Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life.
Even in cases of rape or incest, “we don’t advocate for taking the life of an unborn child for the crime of the father,” he said.
The law’s supporters say that it provides sufficient leeway for physicians to act if a mother’s life or bodily functions are compromised, and they insist those cases are rare.