AUSTIN, Texas – Texans continue to pay the price for Ted Cruz’s long record of supporting Texas’ extreme abortion ban that ties the hands of doctors. Late last week, despite Cruz’s “confidence” in the Texas Medical Board, the board failed to give clear guidance to physicians who perform emergency abortions.  

When Cruz was asked to comment on the Board’s dangerous guidance, “Cruz's office did not respond to the Statesman's request for comment on the adopted rules.”

Austin American-Statesman: Texas Medical Board adopts new guidance for physicians who perform emergency abortions

By Bayliss Wagner

• Texas' medical misconduct watchdog on Friday unanimously adopted regulatory guidance on abortions, making limited changes to a proposal that Texas OB-GYNs, medical associations and others said would create further hurdles for doctors and for patients in need of emergency care amid the state's near-total ban on the procedure.

• Board member Manuel Quiñones, a family physician from San Antonio, said the rules cannot entirely resolve doctors' concerns about potential penalties.

• "There's no way that anything that we do is going to alleviate the apprehension ... and the fear or the reservations that physicians have," Quiñones said at the public meeting Friday.

• U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, took the opportunity to slam U.S. Senate opponent Ted Cruz, the Republican incumbent, for calling Texas' abortion ban "perfectly reasonable."

• “It is unconscionable for a woman’s critical health care decisions to be made by judges, politicians and an appointed board when they should be between a woman and her doctor,” Allred said in a news release. “When I’m in the Senate, I’ll fight to restore the standards set by Roe v. Wade and return the right to make these difficult decisions to Texas women and their doctors.”

• Cruz's office did not respond to the Statesman's request for comment on the adopted rules.

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