Today, the DNC hosted a press call with Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa, U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar (TX-16), Co-Chair of the Biden-Harris Campaign, and Lauren Miller – a mother who was forced to leave the state of Texas to receive life-saving abortion care and joined other Texas women in suing the state for being denied health care despite serious pregnancy complications – calling out the Texas Republican Party’s extreme agenda that, if enacted, could lead to dystopian consequences like subjecting women who have abortions to the death penalty. 

After overturning Roe, opening the door to contraception restrictions, and endorsing states’ prosecution of women, Donald Trump has emboldened Texas Republicans to pursue an extreme anti-freedom agenda that would further criminalize abortion in Texas, as Trump and his MAGA minions in Texas and across the country plot to ban abortion nationwide and punish women for accessing care if Trump returns to the White House in November. 

Find highlights from the press call below:

“Let’s be clear: Texas Republicans did this and it shows their true cruelty. And they could only do it because of one man: Donald Trump,” said U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar (TX-16), Co-Chair of the Biden-Harris Campaign. “Donald Trump has repeatedly bragged that he is ‘proudly’ responsible for overturning Roe and ripping away women’s reproductive freedoms. Trump now says that state bans are ‘working the way they are supposed to.’ When women are suffering, when women can’t make their own decisions, when women’s lives are on the line he claims that this is the way it’s supposed to work. I ask every Texan, every American, but especially women like Lauren, Kate Cox, Amanda Zurawski and countless others who have fought for life-saving care – How dare he say that this is working?”

“I’ll never forget when one specialist tore off his gloves in frustration and threw them in the trash. ‘I can’t help you anymore,’ he said. ‘You need to leave the state…’ I was at risk of organ damage to my kidneys and brain, but I wasn’t dead enough for an abortion in Texas,” said Lauren Miller, Dallas mother who was forced to leave Texas to receive critical care because of the state’s abortion ban and joined a lawsuit filed by Texas women denied health care despite serious pregnancy complications. “This is untenable for the millions of women who call Texas home, and if we allow Trump to reach the White House this November, he will make this nightmare a reality nationwide.”

“Texas Republicans have repeatedly shown who they are. They are a group of MAGA extremists hellbent on stripping away women’s rights and all of their talk of being the party of freedom is hogwash,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, Chair of Texas Democratic State Party. “Our message to voters is this: Texas Democrats are the party of freedom. Joe Biden is the candidate who will protect fundamental freedoms in the states. We want people in our state to have the freedom to choose what health care is best for them without the threat of capital punishment. The fact that we are even discussing this is further proof of the depravity of Texas Republicans. This weekend in El Paso, Democrats from across the state of Texas will gather and vote on a platform that protects women from these violent threats and we will specifically protect families’ access to IVF treatment as one of our pillars.”