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For Religious Right, Session Isn't All About Taxes: Work Against Abortion, Stem Cells Taken Up in Case Agenda Expands

Posted on: Wednesday, 10 May 2006, 12:07 CDT

By Karen Brooks, The Dallas Morning News

May 10--AUSTIN -- In Texas politics these days, two things dominate the conversation: God and taxes.

During this special session on taxes, the religious right is flexing its muscle on issues that have little to do with the task at hand -- fixing school finance. Instead, the groups are working to ensure that Texas doesn't slip down the path of easy abortions, embryonic stem-cell research and morning-after pills.

That may not sound like anything legislators are concerned with as they struggle to pass a tax swap with one week left in the special session and a June 1 deadline looming.

But they are issues that touch the heart of the religious right and social conservatives who are the electoral base of most GOP legislators in Austin -- including the governor.

So their issues are getting an audience as lawmakers take up their interim committee charges and ready legislation in case Gov. Rick Perry expands the agenda to allow lawmakers to debate bills outside school finance.

"We have to be preparing for the '07 session, but we've also got to be eternally vigilant," said Cathie Adams, executive director of the conservative Dallas-based Texas Eagle Forum. "If this issue is brought up by anybody, in committee or on the floor, we had better be consistent."

Hannah Rittering, director of the Texas chapter of the National Organization for Women, blasted lawmakers in an afternoon committee hearing for spending time on these issues at all.

"Are you supposed to be here fixing education?" asked Ms. Rittering, a frequent opponent of Ms. Adams and other abortion rights opponents. "It appears to be you all aren't getting anywhere, and as usual, as a way to hide from the public the inability to do that ... you say, 'Let's go, ooga-booga-booga, let's talk about abortion.' "

The Texas House has already passed all five parts of Mr. Perry's school-finance package. The Senate has sent two pieces along to the governor and is stalled on the other three parts.

So lawmakers in the lower chamber, their work done for now, have taken up God's business.

E-mails, office visits and intense lobbying by both sides of the abortion/stem-cell/morning-after debate have shone a spotlight on those issues -- as Rep. Geanie Morrison discovered when she filed a bill creating hundreds of millions in tuition revenue bonds for universities and colleges.

Ms. Morrison, R-Victoria, couldn't get the bill passed during the regular session in 2005 because it took a back seat to public-school finance.

So this session, her bill was waiting for the governor to give the green light when the conservatives persuaded her to revise the part that allows the bonds to pay for an adult stem-cell research center at the University of Texas at Austin.

The revision: Ban any future stem-cell research that involves embryos, a pre-emptive strike against a practice opponents believe is akin to murder. The language would prevent a slippery slope toward cloning and procreating for research, and it greases the wheels for easier passage, said Rep. Charlie Howard, R-Sugar Land, who typically leads the charge for conservative causes in the House.

The House State Affairs committee is working on two interim charges: a new parental consent law and pharmacists' right to deny the morning-after birth-control pill to patients for moral reasons.

Rep. Chuck Hopson, a Jacksonville Democrat and a pharmacist, suggested that pharmacists be allowed to refuse only if the pharmacies have a contingency plan to help the patient fill the prescription another way. The compromise, which won the cautious support of both sides in Tuesday's testimony, will probably be considered during the 2007 session.

Lawmakers also heard an update on a new parental-consent law from the Texas Board of Medical Examiners. The board has been grappling with its new role as enforcer since the Legislature required that it punish doctors, starting last September, who perform abortions on minors without a parent's consent.

E-mail kmbrooks@dallasnews.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News

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Source: The Dallas Morning News

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