SB 2880 was a massive, monstrous bill that would have effectively pushed all abortion out of reach in the state and potentially opened up a whole new dimension of legal troubles for those who help someone access abortion. The bill would have established civil and criminal penalties for those who help pay for abortions, and also allow people to sue internet providers that host information about medication abortion, and prohibits the mere acts of “[creating], [editing], [uploading], [publishing], [hosting], [maintaining], or [registering] a domain name” for anything that might help someone get abortion pills. In April, the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned that under SB 2880, “Even your social media posts could put you at risk.” Further, SB 2880 would allow individuals to sue those who send abortion pills for wrongful death and expand the statute of limitations for someone to do so; torts law, or laws allowing someone to sue for damages, typically has a two-year window—SB 2880 would have expanded this to six years.
“The intent is to be a very strong and unequivocal statement to those who would ship these pills into Texas that, don’t do that,” state Sen. Brian Hughes (R), author of SB 2880, said of his bill in April. “This is a strong statement about these pills and their harm to little babies and to women. It’s strong.” (Medication abortion, to restate what all credible, objective studies have already shown, is highly safe and effective.) In 2023, about two-thirds of abortions in the U.S. were medication abortions, and as of May 2024, about a fifth of abortions in the U.S. were facilitated through telemedicine. More and more patients, especially in abortion-banned states, rely on medication abortion shipped from out-of-state. Consequently, the anti-abortion movement is desperately escalating its war on telehealth access to abortion pills. States like Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, New York, and California offer shield laws that protect health care providers who send abortion pills to patients in states that ban abortion from facing legal repercussions. Now, anti-abortion lawmakers in states like Texas are throwing everything at the wall to challenge these laws—including suing a New York-based abortion provider, while the state of Louisiana tries to extradite that same doctor.
SB 2880 is one of several extreme anti-abortion bills Texas’ Senate has recently passed, alongside SB 1976, an incredibly bizarre bill that would also clamp down on medication abortion by requiring wastewater treatment plants to test for abortion pills and hormones commonly found in birth control, despite no evidence the medication has any environmental impact. The Senate also passed the “Life of the Mother Act” (HB 44 and SB 31), which claims to “clarify” when health providers are permitted to perform emergency abortions, but instead, appears to be a backdoor to revive the state’s 1925 abortion ban, which makes it a criminal offense for anyone to not just perform an abortion but even to “furnish the means” for one.
In April, the Texas Tribune noted that SB 2880 could “face a harder road in the House,” where even some anti-abortion lawmakers may question its constitutionality. Over the weekend, numerous House and Senate Republicans appealed to House Committee on State Affairs chair Ken King (R) to bring the bill forward for a vote before the legislative session ends on June 2. “Texas is in crisis. The tremendous protections afforded to mothers and children by [Texas’ abortion bans], is subverted daily by bad actors who flood our state with dangerous and deadly abortion pills,” Republican senators wrote in a letter to King. “This must end.”
However, House Republican leaders appear to have declined to put the bill on the calendar for a vote by the deadline, The Texan News reports. This has prompted celebration from Texas reproductive rights advocates. But while the defeat of SB 2880 marks an important victory, it’s still alarming that it came this close to passing, and has created a new blueprint for Texas Republicans and Republicans in other states to further crack down on both reproductive rights and the legal avenues to challenge anti-abortion laws.
“Texas has often served as a sort of litmus test for anti-abortion extremists. The very same lawmaker that came up with Texas’ vigilante law banning abortion is now attempting the same with medication abortion,” Nimra Chowdhry, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “State officials are intent on trapping Texans and ending all abortion access in the state, no matter the cost to people’s lives. And we could see more like-minded states attempt the same.”
Correction 5/27/25: An earlier version of this story did not mention that House Republican leaders declined to put this bill on the calendar for a floor vote. This story has been updated to reflect that.
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