First posted on Instagram
Texas Democrats have filed a bill to repeal the state's Heartbeat Act and the rest of its abortion bans, the first legislative move of the new Democratic majority in Austin, with Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa pushing to restore abortion access in a state where the procedure has been almost entirely outlawed since Roe v. Wade was overturned. The bill, House Bill 126, was filed on Monday, November 9 — the first day lawmakers could prefile for the 2027 session — by state Rep. Donna Howard of Austin, and it faces a Republican-controlled Texas Senate that has blocked every previous repeal attempt.
The stakes are concrete for Texas women and families: if the bill became law, abortion would again be legal in Texas after nearly five years in which the Heartbeat Act let private citizens sue anyone who helps a woman get an abortion after about six weeks, and the state's trigger law banned the procedure outright. The same bill would also lift the 2023 ban on puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery for transgender teenagers, a pairing its supporters say treats reproductive care and gender-affirming care as one fight over who decides medical treatment.
House Bill 126 is sweeping. It repeals the trigger law that made abortion illegal in Texas after Roe fell, repeals the Heartbeat Act — the 2021 law, also known as Senate Bill 8, enforced through private lawsuits rather than by the state — and repeals the abortion statutes written in the 1920s that the trigger law revived. It also strikes the forced-sonogram provisions and the 2021 restrictions on abortion pills, Erin in the Morning reported. On youth care, it repeals Subchapter X of Chapter 161 of the Health and Safety Code, the core of Senate Bill 14, which bars doctors from providing puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical care to transgender youth, and it repeals the Medicaid exclusion in that law.
Howard, a former nurse who has held her Austin seat since 2006 and chairs the Texas Women's Health Caucus, filed the bill on the first day of prefiling. She is not alone: Representative-elect Samantha Lopez-Resendez has filed House Bill 948, which also repeals all three abortion bans, and Rep. Rhetta Bowers has filed House Bill 987, which keeps a six-week limit but throws out the trigger law and the 1925 ban. Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson has already said he will not pursue lawsuits against out-of-state doctors who mail abortion pills to Texans, breaking from Ken Paxton's practice of suing them.
Hinojosa, who defeated Republican Governor Greg Abbott on November 3 to become Texas' first Latina governor and its first Democratic governor since Ann Richards left office in 1995, has said she would sign a repeal of the state's abortion laws if one reached her desk. In her first interview with The New York Times since her victory, she said she was optimistic about finding a way to chip away at the abortion ban even while working with a Republican Senate, telling the paper she was "feeling pretty confident that we can come together in the name of saving women's lives." But the Houston Chronicle reported in September that she had said rolling back abortion and trans youth care restrictions would "not be my priority," and the bill's own supporters concede it is likely a messaging bill: Republicans still control the Texas Senate, and the chamber has never let a repeal reach the floor.
That Senate is where the fight will be decided, and the arithmetic is unusual. Republicans hold the seats, but Democrat Vikki Goodwin — who beat three-term Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on November 3 — will hold the gavel when the session opens on January 12, and the lieutenant governor appoints every Senate committee member and decides which bills reach the floor. Hinojosa and Goodwin take office on January 19. A health policy expert told the Houston Chronicle that while a full repeal likely lacks the votes, a bill adding exceptions for rape and incest could win some Republican support. Bill filing continues through March 12.
What happens next is a test of how far the new Democratic majority is willing to push. If Democrats force a vote on House Bill 126, House Republicans would have to go on the record a week after an election in which their party lost the governor's mansion, the attorney general's office and the House. If they do not, the bill dies quietly in the Senate, and abortion in Texas stays banned until at least the next regular session in 2029.