by Cassandra Jaramillo and Lizzie Presser

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The Texas Senate has unanimously passed legislation that aims to prevent maternal deaths under the state’s strict abortion ban.

Written in response to a ProPublica investigation last year, Senate Bill 31, called The Life of the Mother Act, represents a remarkable turn among the Republican lawmakers who were the original supporters of the ban. For the first time in four years, they acknowledged that women were being denied care because of confusion about the law and took action to clarify its terms.

“We don’t want to have any reason for hesitation,” said Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, who authored the state’s original abortion ban and sponsored this reform with bipartisan input and support. Just last fall, he had said the law he wrote was “plenty clear.”

The bill stops short of removing what doctors say are the ban’s biggest impediments to care, including its major criminal penalties, and doesn’t expand abortion access to cases........

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