A Republican senator walks to his Democratic colleague after her speech on the Texas senate floor. He shakes her hand and smiles. She smiles at the lawmaker whose philosophies could not be further from hers. Bryan Hughes is a man hard not to like.
He’s also a man hard to ignore and impossible to separate from his deeply held moral convictions.
Hughes, chair of the powerful Senate State Affairs Committee, has taken the Republican legislative bull by the horns recently. The senator was the central figure in four bills, including one of the strongest efforts to return integrity and security to Texas elections.
That the Democrats labeled Senate Bill 7 a “voter suppression bill” did not surprise Senator Hughes. He knew any attempt to change the liberals’ 2020 pandemic allowances would get blowback from those who hoped such “emergency” measures would become permanent. But even he may have been surprised, though, at the massive “fly-out” to Washington, D.C.
Eventually, elected representatives must return to duty. They did, and the bill passed, becoming law in July.
SB 7 plugs the leaky bucket of election integrity. The measure contains seven major changes, including mandating sufficiently long voting hours, banning drive-thru voting and unsolicited mail-in ballot applications, and regularly removing non-citizens from the voter rolls.
Those in America who understand election integrity is the bedrock of democracy are praising the bill.
Some companies that do business in the Lone Star State made their opposition to the bill known. About those, Hughes quipped to CNN Politics, “…if a company doesn’t like the policies in Texas, I hear there are a lot of vacancies in California.”
Senator Hughes was no less a stalwart on the Texas Heartbeat Act—perhaps the most impactful piece of legislation on abortion since Roe v Wade. The heart of the bill addresses the first fluttering rhythms of a human heartbeat— the beginning signal of life. The law prohibits elective abortions after this heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy.
To no one’s surprise, this element was loudly criticized by the national media and abortion supporters. Fortunately, Senator Hughes pays more attention to his fellow Texans than The New York Times or CNN. He understands that 48% of Texans favor—and only 42% oppose—restricting abortions to the weeks before detectable heartbeat.
Not a man of self-aggrandizement, Bryan Hughes would be the first to say a plethora of bright minds carefully honed his original abortion bill.
He would give credit to Shelby Slawson, its House sponsor, and the 11 pro-life women state legislators who co-authored the bill.
Those opposed to the Act express their disapproval in a variety of terms. Dyana Limon-Mercado, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, said Hughes is “dehumanizing Texans and forcing Texans to suffer unnecessarily.” The law, and by extension its author, is called extremist. If that is so, Senator Hughes is apparently in good company, with nearly half of his fellow Texans being “extremists.”
The fact is, the Texas Heartbeat law leaves many options available for Texas women, including birth control that prevents egg and sperm uniting or fetal implantation; pregnancy tests, which can accurately and inexpensively confirm pregnancy only two weeks after conception; and free ultrasound tests at the 200 Pregnancy Care centers in Texas, which can reveal an implanted life about three weeks after conception.
For those women who wish to consider carrying to term, The Texas Alternatives to Abortion Program and the Healthy Texas Women Program provide financial aid, counseling, health care, and housing support.
Perhaps the most novel part of the bill is the enforcement mechanism built on private citizen-initiated litigation rather than government authority. This is what most certainly kept the new law from being immediately stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
There is no doubt that this law’s fate is far from determined. But whether or not the law is allowed to stand, one thing is clear: Senator Hughes accomplished something that no other elected leader has in the more than 40 years since Roe—he’s fundamentally changed the national conversation on abortion.
When pro-abortion activists are debating whether or not there’s a detectable heartbeat at six weeks, they are engaging on the terms of pro-life advocates. Hughes’ law managed to reframe the debate from whether a life in the womb is sacred, to when does that sacred life actually begin.
Say what you will about Bryan Hughes, he has managed to transform one of the most intractable political debates in the last half century of American politics. And for that, conservatives everywhere should be grateful.
Marilyn Quigley is a professor emerita at Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri and the author of two books: "Hell Frozen Over: The Battle of the Bulge" and "Journey to Elsewhere," a historical novel for children about the Underground Railroad.