Texas reconsidering restrictive abortion laws

beneful baked delights: in your day. legislature today resume consideration of one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. republicans in the lone star state seek to ban abortion at 20 weeks and put in place regulatory burdens designed to force 37 of the state's 42 abortion providers to close their doors. for the past two days, abortion rights supporters, clad in orange, have demonstrated outside the capitol where they have faced off against anti-choice advocates dressed in blue, as well as prominent voices in the pro-life movement.

>> no such thing as a life that is so insignificant, so worthless, so unwanted, so unnecessary that any of us would choose and believe that we are so god like that we would singularly have the right to extinguish that which god created.

>> the bill, an attempt to dramatically reduce reproductive freedoms for the 13 million women of texas . davis and her supporters displayed democracy in action was dismissed by governor perry as something else entirely.

>> people have relayed to me that never in the mystery of texas have they seen that type after mob rule come in and discombobulate a legislative session. anyone who watched that would consider that would be mob rule .

>> despite this outbreak of " mob rule ," the bill is expected to be approved by the republican controlled house today and by the senate later this week, after which governor perry will sign it into law. it will make texas the 13th state to ban abortion at 20 weeks. north dakota 's ban, the strictest in the country at six weeks, will go into an effect in august. but texas isn't the only state where conservatives have rolled back a woman's right to choose. in ohio governor john kasich flanked by an all-male audience, signed a budget bill that also made ohio's abortion laws some of the strictest in the nation and in wisconsin, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order yesterday after governor scott walker signed a bill into law aimed at shutting down abortion clinics an mandating ultra sounds. walker quietly signed the bill during a private ceremony over the july 4th weekend. afterwards he had to say -- this bill improves a woman's ability to make an informed chase that will protect her physical and mental health , now and in the future." but to walker and his brethren, choice has nothing to do with freedom or settled law. he specified later -- women have a choice as to the ultrasound they receive. joining me today, " washington post " political editor and white house correspondent for the huffington post -- sorry -- and msnbc contributor sam stein. former dnc communications director and host of msnbc's "disrupt," karen finney. david carr , and former national press secretary for the obama campaign , ben la bolt . also joining us, "new york times" op-ed contributor beth murfitch. beth, to you first. were you actually in the gallery in texas when wendy davis did her 11-hour filibuster and wrote a really moving op-ed in the "new york times" about your mother's very difficult choice to have an abortion. one of the biggest take-aways from that piece was your urging women who have had to make this difficult choice to come out and talk about it. tell us more about why you think that's important at this moment.

>> more women than we would like to know -- or than we think have had abortions. it is estimated 22% of pregnancies in the united states are terminated and that of the women that terminate, 61% of those women are already mothers. i think such shame permeates our discussion about abortion. and in fact that is so contradictory to how i feel about my mother's abortion. i am incredibly proud of her. at the age of 20 years old she had the wisdom and the courage to know that her own potential would be cut short by a pregnancy and to terminate that pregnancy and i think many of our mothers have similar stories and it is really important to talk about that.

>> i want to open it up to our panel here in new york . the choice is really hard and i think that so much of this has been oversimplified into good and bad --

>> absolutely.

>> and the notion that women should be ashamed into choices about their bodies and their reproductive life is really i think a bastardization of the argument at large. i want your thoughts on what's happening in texas and across the country because there is movement forward on this issue and it is not in the direction of progress.

>> i think it is very clearly a cheap -- i view it as cheap as somebody who is pro-choice. this is an issue consistently being used. that's not to say there aren't people for whom they feel very strongly, but a lot of politicians use this as a way to firm up their bona fides with the far right. one thing with particular in particular -- there was a stutdstutd study in the "new york times" it is not women 's mental health , it is their physical and economic health that tends to suffer when they are forced to have a child they are not prepared to have and when in a lot of instances they already have a child. in states like texas , there are no supports for women who are low-income and forced to have a child. that's part of what's so disgusting about this. they demonize women and demonize the choices and demonize people who may need to rely on some of these programs to help them be better parents. like head start, as sam writes about, or like snap. so you are demonizing women in low-income families on both ends of the spectrum and saying it is your fault, you've got to step up to the plate, but you got to do it on your own and you're a bad parent.

>> what strikes me about it though, they're not necessarily trying to limit the choice that the woman wants. what they are trying to do is create so much burden on the woman after she's made her choice that she reverses it so you have these things like the forced ultrasound issue or simply closing down abortion clinics so that it is such a long process to get there.

>> or a dangerous process.

>> so that doesn't -- again, what ends up happening is that the mother makes a choice that she wants to terminate the pregnancy, then has to go through all these additional loopholes. i think that's sort of an insidious way of this to go about it politically.

>> wait a second. your body is violated by a probe that you may not want. that is not a choice.

>> i'm saying they already decided they want the abortion, now you add additional burdens to the process to almost convince them not to do it.

>> here's what i don't understand. culturally speaking, what is the rationale here? i think walker is a really interesting case. here he signed this bill, sort of -- secretly, but certainly without lights around him on the july 4th weekend. which would seem to be -- i guess -- a way of mitigating a disastrous choice in my mind. then at the same time you have a rising star like marco rubio who i think is trying to get some bona fides with the conservative community, perhaps because he's gone out there on immigration reform . does that work on the national stage? i mean obama won women by 11 points, i believe, in the 2012 exit polls ?

>> i think abortion is a pretty complicated political instrument. if you look at the democrats in texas right now trying to reach out to latinos, this probably isn't the issue that they would have chosen because it --

>> in texas .

>> -- yeah. in texas amongst the latino community there is a real complicated relationship with abortion. i think part of what happens is the more subtle nuanced approach. for instance, if you wipe out more than half of the installed base of clinics in texas , you all the family planning goes with it. all the -- and so you end up with people who are often getting pregnant at higher rates because you have taken out other options. i do think it is an argument that calls for an incredible amount of nuance. never gets it.

>> but politically, i mean this is the opposite of what the republican autopsy report on 2012 recommended. they were supposed to be a more inclusive party and you've seen this movement in states across the country other past 20 weeks. now ohio an north carolina are coming on to the map. keeping -- nobody has done more to keep independent women in play for democrats than these laws. this is truly unbelievable. and now that they are adding them to the equation in texas , we thought texas would be in play for democrats because of the growing hispanic population but imagine if independent women are now in play. we've been talking about 2020 . maybe this moves the timetable up.

>> also, if you're going to be signing draconian abortion bills into law, maybe you don't do it in a room full of men. i mean like literally politics optic 101.