FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 18, 2025
CONTACT: Emily Witt (she/her), [email protected]
TEXAS – Gov. Abbott yesterday signed House Bill 7, legislation crafted to ban the distribution of abortion pills into Texas, into law.
The bill was passed during the state’s second special legislative session of 2025, during which policies targeting abortion access, limiting access to public facilities for transgender Texans, and redrawing Texas’ congressional voting maps became priorities despite Abbott’s original call centering on disaster relief following July’s floods in Central Texas.
Under HB 7, private citizens — including those living outside of Texas — have the ability to sue anyone who distributes, transports, manufactures, or mails abortion medication to the state, even if the defendant resides or is based in a state or country where these actions are not prohibited.
Once House Bill 7 goes into effect on December 4, 2025, Texans will be living under four overlapping abortion bans and numerous restrictions. The prohibitions include 2021’s Senate Bill 8, which uses the same civil suit mechanism to ban abortion after six weeks, a “trigger ban,” which went into effect after the Dobbs decision and makes providing an abortion a felony without exception, and Texas’ Pre-Roe ban.
Avow Texas Policy Director Yaneth Flores issued the following statement:
“Yet again, extremist Texas lawmakers have abandoned their duty to serve Texans and instead hijacked this session to exert more power and control over our bodies, our democracy, and our futures. This is the behavior of abusers grasping for fleeting power, not leaders.
“Anti-abortion policies are rooted in chaos and cruelty — which is why the same people leading the movement to steal our bodily autonomy consistently block our access to the ballot box, affordable healthcare, strong public schools, reliable infrastructure, and so much more. They seek to create an environment of desperation and injustice where authoritarianism thrives.
“Real governance for the people is rooted in care, justice, and truth. The truth is that self-managed abortion and medication abortion via telehealth are safe. Encouraging strangers to surveil their neighbors is not.
“Together, we can build power for a state and country where our leaders cling to their values, not discard them to control and oppress us. We create our future — not them. That future is pro-abortion — without shame, without compromise.”
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