Birth control ruling to see fresh scrutiny at Texas Capitol

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Samantha Sorsby-Jones watched friends at her Texas high school go to great lengths to get birth control: Secretly arranging rides to clinics that didn’t require parental consent and hiding phones in bushes in case parents were tracking them.

Starting Tuesday, access to reproductive healthcare is likely to command fresh scrutiny before the Republican-controlled Texas Capitol, where new restrictions are on the table in the first session since a stringent statewide abortion ban took effect.

Texas' abortion ban is one of the nation's strictest, allowing no exceptions in cases of rape or incest, and Republican leaders have been non-committal about adding carveouts over the next five months. Naitonwide, reproductive rights is poised to remain a dominant issue in other U.S. statehouses, where a patchwork of policies has spread nationwide following the fall of Roe v. Wade.

“The right to bodily autonomy is being taken away in so many different ways, it is really devastating,” said Sorsby-Jones, 20, who as a high school student three years ago was able to get birth control at a federally funded clinic in Texas after her parents refused to help her.

But a December ruling by a federal judge in Amarillo has suddenly closed that avenue to other Texas teens. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that allowing minors to obtain free birth control without parental consent at federally funded clinics, under a program known as Title X, violated parental rights and state law.

Such clinics offer an array of family planning services and served more than 182,000 people in 2020 in Texas, according to Every Body Texas, which administers the funds for the state. A bill filed by a Democrat in response to Kacsmaryk's ruling could face resistance from Republicans, who have controlled the Texas Legislature for two...