Abortion Providers Could Face Execution Under Texas GOP's New Proposed Platform

Texas Republicans have proposed a radical policy shift that would allow doctors who perform abortions to be charged with homicide and subjected to the death penalty upon conviction.

As part of an interim party platform for 2024, first highlighted by feminist writer Jessia Valenti, state Republicans have floated several provisions that appear to re-classify performing abortions as homicide, a crime which carries a potential death sentence if convicted.

Chapter 19 of the Texas Penal Code deals with homicide, stating:

A person commits criminal homicide if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence causes the death of an individual. Criminal homicide is murder, capital murder, manslaughter, or criminally negligent homicide.

Section 6 of this chapter provides exceptions applying to the death of an unborn child. Conduct that would not be charged as a homicide would include:

• conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child


• an abortion carried out with consent by a physician or licensed health care provider


• the death of an unborn child resulting from in vitro fertilization procedures


• a lawfully prescribed drug that results in the death of an unborn child

Texas Republicans state in the proposed platform that life begins “from the moment of fertilization” and have called for eliminating the physician exception which would make it a homicide to perform an abortion in any case other than to save the life of the mother.

Page 35 of the document states, “Abortion is not healthcare it is homicide,” while adding a more detailed explanation of the policy stance:

Since life begins at fertilization, we urge the Texas Legislature to abolish abortion through enacting legislation that would immediately secure the right to life and would nullify any and all federal statutes, regulations, orders, and court rulings that would deny these rights. We urge the Texas legislature to enact legislation to abolish abortion by immediately securing the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization and to oppose legislation that discriminates against any preborn children and violates the United States Constitution by denying such persons the equal protection of the laws, and to adopt effective tools to ensure the enforcement of our laws to protect life when doctors or district attorneys fail to do so.

Under Texas law, homicide is considered a third-degree felony.

Any person above the age of 18 at the time of conviction of a capital felony — in which an individual “intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual,” the same language used in the Texas GOP’s proposed 2024 platform — is able to have the death penalty imposed upon them.

At the time of publication, the Republican Party of Texas had not provided a statement.