Texas Senate Democrats On Passage Of Senate Bill 2880

Austin, TX—The Texas Senate Democratic Caucus released the following statement on passage of Senate Bill 2880:

Senate Bill 2880 is a shocking overreach of state power that weaponizes civil penalties to intimidate and punish those who support a Texas woman’s decision to seek reproductive care—including lawful care in other states. The real purpose of this bill is fear. Whether lawsuits succeed or not, the threat alone deters support, isolates pregnant women and attacks the very foundation of the judicial branch. The bill tells Texas women: you’re alone. It tells doctors, family members, clergy and out-of-state providers: help them and you’re next. It tells lawyers and judges: do your job at your peril.

Chillingly, the bill also provides new tools to abusive partners, allowing them to sue, weaponize private medical information and further control survivors.

The bill expands on the vigilante-style civil enforcement mechanism first seen in SB 8 (the “bounty hunter” law), which encourages private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. SB 2880 builds on that strategy with sweeping provisions aimed at medication abortion with an outrageous $100,000 penalty. It creates new civil liability for anyone who manufactures, mails, transports, delivers, prescribes or provides abortion-inducing drugs—even if that support happens entirely outside Texas.

In a bizarre turn, SB 2880 includes a provision to block judicial review, asserting that Texas courts lack jurisdiction to consider or invalidate any part of the bill. At the same time, it extends the $100,000 penalty to judges who dare to review the law and find it unconstitutional as well as attorneys who dare to represent clients in those proceedings.

It is also profoundly disturbing that SB 2880 purports to implicitly revive Texas’s pre-Roe abortion ban, treating it as enforceable despite court rulings that have enjoined it. By explicitly incorporating the 1925 law into the bill’s definition of “criminal abortion law,” SB 2880 intends to open the door to both civil and potentially criminal action under a long-superseded legal framework. This 1925 law does allow the prosecution of pregnant women and explicitly criminalizes “furnishing the means” of abortion—a vague clause that could be used to prosecute those who assist with abortion-related travel including husbands, daughters, sons and other family members.

The bill author has refused all requests to make this bill neutral on the subject of prior law, despite having willingly fixed it in SB 31. SB 2880 not only revives criminal exposure, it empowers the Attorney General to enforce it through civil litigation, dramatically expanding state authority to pursue and punish Texans for exercising a constitutionally protected right to travel.

In its current form, SB 2880 is a backdoor effort to fully reinstate the 1925 law. It is a vote to criminalize women, trap them within the borders of Texas and to threaten anyone who tries to help them—regardless of whether the abortion occurs legally in another state. This includes survivors of rape and incest and those facing lethal fetal diagnoses. It is harsher than any abortion law currently on the books and it represents a deliberate step backward into an era of cruelty, surveillance and state control over private medical decisions.

Texans deserve compassion and clarity, not intimidation. SB 2880 is unconstitutional, it harms women and families, and severely undermines the legal system on which we all rely.