AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — When Texas’ new abortion law made no exceptions in rape cases, Republican government Greg Abbott defended it with the assurance: Texas would work to ban rape.
A year later, Lindsey LeBlanc is busy helping rape victims in a college town outside of Houston.
“The numbers have been consistently high,” said LeBlanc, executive director of the Sexual Assault Resource Center in Bryan, near Texas A&M University. Despite hiring two additional first responders in the past six months, she still has a waiting list for victims.
“We’re struggling to keep up with demand,” she says.
The constant flow of cases in Texas is another example of how Republicans have struggled to defend indiscriminate abortion bans that are unpopular in public opinion polls, have sparked a stir in high-profile cases and provoke political risk en route to November’s midterm elections. A year since the Texas law went into effect in September 2021, at least a dozen states have also banned those that don’t make exceptions in rape or incest cases.
The lack of exceptions has caused division among Republicans, including in West Virginia, where a new law signed this month gives rape and incest victims a short window of time to get an abortion, only if they first turn to the police. report. Recently, Republicans in South Carolina scuttled a proposed ban after failing to get enough support from the GOP.
“It really disgusts me,” South Carolina Republican Senator Katrina Shealy said, as she robbed her male colleagues on the floor of the state Senate.
Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham, also from South Carolina, allowed exceptions under the proposed national abortion ban he introduced last week. The proposal has virtually no chance of passing, and even GOP leaders don’t immediately support it, reflecting how broadly Republicans have struggled to deal with the issue of abortion with voters since the US Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade overthrew this summer.
An overwhelming majority of voters believe their state should generally allow abortion in specific cases, including rape, incest or if the health of the pregnant person is at risk. Even Republicans see it as a line with some voters.
“It’s a very gray matter,” said Claudia Alcazar, the GOP chairperson in Starr County along the Texas-Mexico border, which has become a new political battleground after Republicans made big gains with more conservative Hispanic voters in 2020.
She said she knows people who are “hardcore”, never have abortions for any reason, period. And then I have the others who say, ‘Well, you know, it depends.’”
In Texas, the backlash was swift when Abbott said last September, “Texas will work tirelessly to ensure we eliminate all rapists from the streets.” Critics called it disconnected from reality. A sexual assault hotline in Houston is through August this year — putting it on track to exceed last year’s volume of 4,843.
As of this summer, all abortions in Texas have been banned unless it would save a mother’s life.
When asked what Abbott has done in the past year to eradicate rape, spokeswoman Renae Eze highlighted older measures to reduce backlogs in rape test kits, a bill signed in June aimed at coordinating and expanding resources for sexual assault and a taskforce his office which was launched in his office in 2019 to address the problem.
“To prevent such horrific crimes before they happen, and to prosecute criminals to the fullest extent of the law, Governor Abbott has aggressively fought police defunding and led bail reforms to prevent the release of dangerous criminals. Eze said in a statement. pronunciation.
More than 14,000 rape crimes have been reported in Texas since the law went into effect last year, according to data from the Texas Department of Public Safety. That was slightly lower than the previous year and matched a decline in other violent crime figures in the state.
Texas crisis centers say the number of rape victims they’ve accompanied to hospitals for exams has been recovering since the pandemic restrictions prevented lawyers from entering. The Fort Worth Women’s Center has made more than 650 visits to victims undergoing exams in the past year, compared to about 340 the year before, said Alisha Mathenia, the assistant director of crisis services at the center.
Most sex crimes are never reported to the police, making available data an incomplete picture. And according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, about 8 out of 10 sexual assaults are committed by a person known to the victim.
“We are not talking about a large number of rapists walking the streets. That’s a myth,” said Democrat Donna Howard, a state representative in Austin who co-authored the bill that created Abbott’s task force.
At The SAFE Alliance in Austin, where victims of sexual assault can receive exams and medical care at the Eloise House, senior director Juliana Gonzales said it’s admirable that Texas is working on rape prevention. “But I also think it’s important for the state to live in the reality that we have to respond to sexual assault,” she said.
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Stengle reported from Dallas.
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Find more AP coverage on the abortion issue: https://apnews.com/hub/abortion
