Texas GOP push for sweeping anti-abortion law which includes century old criminal statute

In late March, women who had suffered severe pregnancy complications and were forced to leave Texas for care sat in the state Senate chamber and implored Texas lawmakers not to make such situations even worse, according to Bolts. Some had previously sued the state over its abortion bans, after being denied needed medical care in Texas. Devastating fetal diagnoses—one woman learned that the fetus was developing without a skull and would not survive, another was told that severe complications with one developing twin threatened her life and the life of her other healthy twin—left some scrambling to get over the state line. 

But instead of expanding medical exceptions to the state’s abortion bans in order to protect people in these circumstances, the women said, measures being pushed by Texas Republicans threatened to further criminalize them and their loved ones. 

The senators had been hearing testimony on abortion legislation, including a bill that purported to clarify the narrow medical exceptions in Texas abortion bans, following reports of deadly delays in care due to the vague language and penalties of up to life in prison for doctors who violate them. For weeks, that bill, Senate Bill 31, dominated advocacy efforts and headlines. This was in part because the bipartisan measure, deemed a priority bill by even the staunchest anti-abortion lawmakers, contained what some called a “Trojan Horse” provision: By including an early 20th-century, pre-Roe abortion law among the several abortion bans that SB 31 amended, critics said the bill could help resurrect the century-old abortion ban that would allow for criminalizing pregnant people seeking abortions, along with anyone who helps them get the procedure, even if it’s out of state. Eventually, the bill’s authors agreed to add language clarifying that the legislation was neutral on this issue, and it passed the Texas Senate last week. 

Yet Texas Republicans have at the same time been pushing forward another sweeping anti-abortion bill, Senate Bill 2880, which also includes language that could be used to enforce the same pre-Roe ban, often called the 1925 law. 

“This is a backdoor effort to fully reinstate the 1925 law,” Houston-area Democratic Senator Carol Alvarado said last week, just before SB 2880 also passed the full Senate. “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 situations where the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest, or where the fetus has an anomaly that means it will not survive—none of which are an exception under Texas law. 

Multiple Texas attorneys who specialize in reproductive health told Bolts that SB 2880 and its inclusion of language amending the state’s century-old abortion law could constitute an unprecedented step toward the sweeping criminalization of abortion in a state that already has some of the strictest abortion laws in the country. The measure, billed as an effort to crack down on abortion medication following an influx of the pills into the state via telemedicine, would allow anyone to sue individuals or companies who prescribe, manufacture, transport, or distribute abortion pills to a Texas resident, in exchange for a $100,000 reward. The bill would also empower people to bring wrongful death lawsuits following an abortion, and give new powers to the Texas Attorney General to enforce the state’s abortion bans, including the 1925 ban.

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CREATORS: Gun Violence is a Health Epidemic in This Country

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
May 5, 2025

Last summer, the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, declared gun violence a public health crisis.

The advisory issued by the nation's top doctor was the first step to drive down gun deaths. Data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) found that gun violence claimed 46,728 lives in 2023, down slightly from 2022, but still the third-highest annual gun-related deaths ever recorded in the United States.

Though they tend to get less public attention than gun-related murders, suicides have long accounted for the majority of U.S. gun deaths. In 2023, according to the Pew Research Center, 58% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides.

With that in mind, only weeks into his new term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to protect the Second Amendment: "The Second Amendment is an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty. It has preserved the right of the American people to protect ourselves, our families, and our freedoms since the founding of our great Nation. Because it is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans, the right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed."

In March, consistent with the President's order, the administration removed the advisory on gun violence as a public health issue from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' website.

According to The Guardian, the CDC website "Firearm Violence in America," where the advisory had been posted, was filled with data and information about the ripple effects of shootings, the prevalence of firearm suicides and the number of American children and adolescents who have been shot and killed.

The removal of the website and the Surgeon General's warning is unconscionable. Gun violence is a health epidemic for young people in this country.

A report released in September of 2024, by the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, based on data from the CDC, found for the third straight year, firearms killed more children and teens, ages 1 to 17, than any other causes of death, including car crashes and cancer.

The CDC is part of the federal Department of Health and Human Services. HHS is slashing personnel from the CDC. In a recently issued fact sheet, HHS said the CDC's workforce was being reduced by 2,400 people, and the goal is to streamline divisions within the agency and get rid of redundancies.

Last month, the CDC's Injury Center and its Division of Violence Prevention — a unit that studies and works to prevent gun deaths and injuries — lost personnel.

According to National Public Radio, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, "(T)he reality is clear: what we've been doing isn't working. Despite spending $1.9 trillion in annual costs, Americans are getting sicker every year."

More than half a century ago, when Kennedy's father was the U.S. Attorney General, Luther L. Terry, M.D., Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, released the first report of the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health. Terry convened a committee of specialists who reviewed some 7,000 scientific articles and worked with more than 150 consultants to formulate the report, finding that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer.

The report spawned numerous other efforts at various levels of government to curb smoking, including the now-familiar surgeon general's warning on the side of cigarette packages, increased taxation, restrictions on advertising and limiting public areas where people can smoke, along with programs and products to help people kick the habit.

Fortunately, when former President Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, he didn't undo the work of Terry, nor has any president since. Why was that fortunate for America?

As a result of Terry's groundbreaking health advisory, it is estimated that, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, between 1964 and 2014, 8 million lives were saved due to pervasive tobacco-control measures.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Pope Francis pushed Catholics to abolish death penalty in U.S.

Last week, the Catholic Church lost its faithful pastor and visionary leader. And the world lost its most persuasive champion to end the scourge of capital punishment, wrote Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy in The Vatican News.

I remember exactly where I was when Pope Francis addressed the U.S. Congress in September of 2015. I had just deboarded my train arriving at Penn Station in New York. Standing inside the station and watching the simulcast, I was transfixed by the live feed, hanging on to the Holy Father’s every word.  

Pope Francis called on Americans to embrace our highest ideals and to pursue the common good. Yet no line touched me as powerfully as when he made a specific call to end the death penalty in the United States.

It was a powerful, historic moment. Pope Francis was the first Pope to formally address Congress, seizing this opportunity to single out an issue that, for many, still resided within a loophole of disclarity on the continuum of life issues.

Abolitionists cheered, while supporters of the death penalty pushed back. This moment was significant in 2015, but it is only now, after Pope Francis’ passing, that we can fully grasp its importance.

Pope Francis gave Congress, and us, a glimpse into one of the central tenets of his papacy—prophetic and unequivocal action against the death penalty, including and especially promoting its abolition in the United States.

The Catholic Church has long seen the death penalty as incompatible with the consistent ethic of life. In the United States, the injustice is compounded by widespread racial bias, grotesque botched executions, an arbitrary and capricious application, and the reality that innocent people have been sentenced to death.

It is therefore not surprising that Pope Francis would challenge Americans to end this unjust practice. As the head of the universal Church, Pope Francis was also thinking globally. In 2015, global executions were at a 25-year high. American abolition would send a message to the international community setting a key precedent for other nations to follow suit.

Through his congressional address, the Pope sought to inspire the millions of American Catholics, who comprise 22% of the U.S. population, to drive this push for abolition. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and my organization, Catholic Mobilizing Network, were already working hard to advance key arguments against the death penalty and break through the polarization that divides American Catholics.

With countless Catholic public servants in key positions, a new openness to hearing the moral and practical arguments against the death penalty could prove decisive.

Following his 2015 visit, and throughout the next presidential administration, Pope Francis continued to take unparalleled action. He revised the death penalty section of the Catholic Catechism, the core teaching of the Catholic Church, calling the practice “inadmissible” in all cases.

The Pope’s adjustment to Church teaching was a natural progression in line with his predecessors’ efforts to expand the protection of human life, but it was also bold and absolute, eliminating any ambiguity about the Church’s position and contributing to real change; four states abolished the death penalty in four consecutive years—with Catholics playing a central role in these efforts in New Hampshire and Virginia.

At the same time President Trump reinstated federal executions in 2020, Pope Francis released his third encyclical, Fratelli tutti, which included a section decrying the injustice of the death penalty and calling for its worldwide abolition. The encyclical affirmed the Catechism revision, placing the full weight of Pope Francis’ teaching authority behind the Church’s anti-death penalty position.

Furthermore, the Holy Father sent letters to U.S. Presidents and Governors asking them to commute their death rows; he sent thank-you letters when they did; and he even dedicated a Church-wide month of prayer to the goal of global abolition.

In this historic Jubilee Year 2025, Pope Francis called Catholics around the world to “be one in demanding dignified conditions for those in prison, respect for their human rights and above all the abolition of the death penalty, a provision at odds with Christian faith and one that eliminates all hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation.”

And in the final days of the Biden Administration, in his weekly Angelus on December 8, 2024, Pope Francis stood before the world and urged federal death row commutations in the United States. Later that month, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on death row. No president in the history of the United States had ever taken such an action.

For Pope Francis’ legacy to be fully realized, American Catholics and all who admire the Pope’s courageous moral leadership must continue to pursue human dignity.

Will we rise to this challenge by abolishing the death penalty, and honoring the legacy of a Pope who believed in our capacity for mercy?

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Mangino discusses his book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 on Killer Psychologist podcast

Great to join Dr. Dana Anderson and Dr. Craig Wetter on the Killer Psychologist podcast discussing my book The Executioner's Toll, 2010.

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Justice Jackson says attacks on judiciary are designed to undermine the rule of law

 Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the Trump administration’s attacks on the judiciary are “not isolated incidents,” but are designed to intimate the judiciary and “impact more than just the individual judges who are being targeted,” reported Jurist. Justice Jackson further warned that the threats and harassment of the judiciary are an attack on US democracy and “ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.”

Jackson added:

I am taking this point of personal privilege to reaffirm the significance of judicial independence and to denounce attacks on judges based on their rulings. A society in which judges are routinely made to fear for their own safety or their own livelihood due to their decisions is one that has substantially departed from the norms of behavior that govern in a democratic system. Attacks on judicial independence are how countries that are not free, not fair, and not rule-of-law-oriented operate.

Quoting former Justice Stephen Breyer, Jackson stated that judicial independence “is a matter of custom, habit, and institutional expectation,” which requires support not just from the judiciary itself, but from the community in which judges serve. Jackson also recalled that it is “easier to dismantle judicial independence than to attain it.”

Jackson then offered two ideas to ensure that judicial independence is preserved to protect the Constitution and the US public. First, Jackson recommended that judges take a more active role in educating citizens about what the judiciary does, and the importance of the role of judges in defending the Constitution and the rule of law. Toward this end, Jackson reminded that judges throughout the First Circuit are already engaged in civic education and community outreach work. Jackson credited Breyer again for his remarks on civic education and noted the useful insights given by Breyer on what can be said to help the citizenry “understand the connection between judicial independence and their own wellbeing.”

Jackson’s second suggestion is simply that judges “look inward and focus on supporting one another during these challenging times…and continually reminding ourselves of the core values that guide us in our daily work.” Acknowledging the stress that comes along with deciding a difficult case “in the spotlight and under pressure,” Jackson asked judges to look for strength in their historical role models who have faced similar challenges and navigated them with “duty, honor, and a clarity of conscience.” Jackson reminded everyone of the civil rights and Brown v Board of Education era, when lower federal court judges Frank Johnson and Skelly Wright—facing threats, public insults, and private violence in their communities—joined others in striking down bus-segregation and school-segregation and continued to issue integration orders. Jackson also spoke of lower federal court Judge John Sirica, who presided over cases related to the Watergate scandal during the Nixon Administration and who disregarded the political ramifications of his ruling, followed the facts and the law, and ruled against the very party who appointed him to the bench.

Jackson asked judges to think of these and other courageous role models in their own lives to draw inspiration and encouragement to stay on course and do the right thing for the good of the country.

The Trump administration has been noted from the very inception of his second term of consistently defying court orders and proceeding to carry on business as usual. Last month, federal judge John McConnell Jr. accused the Trump administration of defying his order requiring the federal government to release billions of dollars in federal grants after Trump’s attempt to freeze federal aid funding. Earlier this month, federal judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to explain the deportation of more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 despite his previous order not to do so.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had already made note of these actions of defiance and reminded the Trump administration to reciprocate judicial respect for the executive with its own respect for the courts. The Trump administration’s attacks on judges have also prompted Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to speak out against the president in March.

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Florida executes man who slaughtered a mother and her three young children

 The 15th Execution of 2025

Jeffrey Hutchinson an Army combat veteran whose Gulf War experience triggered severe mental problems was executed May 1, 2025 in Florida for the 1998 shotgun slayings of his girlfriend and her three young children, reported The Associated Press.

Hutchinson, 62, was pronounced dead at 8:15 p.m. following a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was the fourth person executed this year in the state under death warrants signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, with a fifth execution set for May 15.

Hutchinson had no last statement but appeared to be mumbling to himself as the procedure started just before 8 p.m. His legs shook sporadically, and he seemed to have body spasms for several minutes and then was still. The process took a little more than 15 minutes.

The execution was carried out soon after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a final appeal without comment.

Hutchinson had long claimed that he was innocent and that two unknown assailants perpetrated the killings under a U.S. government conspiracy aimed at silencing his activism on claims including Gulf War illnesses involving veterans. Hutchinson served eight years in the Army, part of it as an elite Ranger.

Court records, however, showed that on the night of the killings in Crestview, Hutchinson argued with his girlfriend, 32-year-old Renee Flaherty, then packed his clothes and guns into a truck. Hutchinson went to a bar and drank some beer, telling staff there that Flaherty was angry with him before leaving abruptly.

A short time later, a male caller told a 911 operator, “I just shot my family” from the house Hutchinson and Flaherty shared with the three children: 9-year-old Geoffrey, 7-year-old Amanda, and 4-year-old Logan. All were killed with a 12-gauge shotgun that was found on a kitchen counter. Hutchinson was located by police in the garage with a phone still connected to the 911 center and gunshot residue on his hands.

Darran Johnson, the brother of Renee Flaherty, said after the execution that justice was done but the family’s pain will never end.

“Not a day goes by that we don’t think about the loved ones that were taken from us,” Johnson said.

At his 2001 trial, Hutchinson’s defense was based on his claim that two unknown men came to the house and killed Flaherty and the children after he struggled with them. A jury found him guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, and he received life in prison for Flaherty’s killing and three death sentences for the children.

Hutchinson filed numerous unsuccessful appeals, many focused on mental health problems linked to his Army service. In late April his lawyers sought to delay his execution by claiming he was insane and therefore could not be put to death.

Bradford County Circuit Judge James Colaw rejected that argument in an April 27 order.

“This Court finds that Mr. Hutchinson’s purported delusion is demonstrably false. Jeffrey Hutchinson does not lack the mental capacity to understand the reason for the pending execution,” the judge wrote.

In their court filings, Hutchinson’s lawyers said he suffered from Gulf War Illness — a series of health problems stemming from the 1990-1991 war in Iraq — as well as post-traumatic stress disorder and paranoia related to his claim that he was targeted by government surveillance.

Florida’s lethal injection protocol uses a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.

So far this year, 15 people have been put to death in the U.S. including Hutchinson.

A fifth Florida execution is scheduled May 15 for Glen Rogers, who was convicted of killing a woman at a motel in 1997. Rogers also was convicted of another woman’s murder in California and is believed by investigators to have killed others around the country.

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Trump administration removes surgeon general's warning of gun violence as health emergency--47,000 died from firearms in 2023

 The Trump administration has removed the former surgeon general Vivek Murthy’s advisory on gun violence as a public health issue from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ website. This move was made to comply with Donald Trump’s executive order to protect second amendment rights, a White House official told the Guardian.

The “firearm violence in America” page, where the advisory had been posted, was filled with data and information about the ripple effects of shootings, the prevalence of firearm suicides and the number of American children and adolescents who have been shot and killed. Now, when someone reaches the site they will be met with a “page not found” message.

When it was originally released last summer, Murthy’s advisory was met with praise from violence prevention and research groups, and was lambasted by second amendment law centers and advocacy groups that argued the Biden administration was using public health as a cloak to push forward more gun control.

“This is an extension of the Biden Administration’s war on law-abiding gun owners. America has a crime problem caused by criminals,” the National Rifle Association (NRA) said in a statement posted to X on 25 July 2024.

But Daniel Semenza, a firearm violence researcher with Rutgers University, argues that talking about gun violence through a public health lens is meant to “bring the heat down” about a deeply politicized issue and broaden what prevention can look like.

In 2023, nearly 47,000 people died by firearms, most of them suicides.

“When people read gun violence is a public health problem, they read guns are a public health problem,” Semenza said. “This idea actually removes the politics from the issue and is an engine to get us on the same page. [The removal] feels like an unnecessary and mean-spirited way to politicize something that people have actively been trying to bring people together on.”

The removal of Murthy’s advisory and the rest of the information on the page is one of the thousands of pieces of health information and research removed from federal websites. They include information about vaccines, health risks among youth and gender-based violence, the New York Times reported.

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