The woman who founded Fund Texas Choice (previously Fund Texas Women) in 2014 recently testified against such funding during a Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs hearing, saying she now believes “life begins at conception.”
As a 20-year-old University of Texas student, Lenzi Sheible founded the abortion fund in response to the passage of the state’s previous law protecting preborn children from abortion after 20 weeks. The goal of the nonprofit was to help women get abortions out of state by assisting with the financial costs of traveling for the abortion. Since then, Texas has moved to protect the majority of preborn children from abortion with the exception of those whose mothers face medical emergencies during pregnancy.
Fund Texas Choice has aided countless women in their travel for abortion by paying for airfare, hotels, and other expenses. In 2014, it reported having spent about $10,000 to help 35 women with those expenses. At that time, Sheible admitted, “For people who don’t believe in abortion, what we do seems excessive. What we do seems like we are intentionally trying to get around the legislative barriers that exist, which we are.”
Now she is one of the people who opposes abortion.
During the Senate hearing on March 27, Sheible, now a Texas attorney, said she was there to testify in favor of Senate Bill 33 and Senate Bill 2880. SB 33 would amend state code to prohibit the funding of ‘abortion assistance entities’ — like the abortion fund Sheible founded a decade ago. It says, “[A] government entity may not enter into a taxpayer resource transaction or appropriate or spend money to provide to any person logistical support of the express purpose of assisting a woman with procuring an abortion or the services of an abortion provider.” It specifically focuses on the cities of Austin and San Antonio, which have designated $400,000 and $500,000, respectively, to help residents access abortions.
Senate Bill 2880 ensures that the abortion pill can not be distributed via the internet and that no website can be created to provide information on how to procure a chemical abortion.
Sheible testified (emphases added):
I believe life begins at conception but I did not always believe that.
The last time I was in this room was 2013 during Wendy Davis’ filibuster. I was… very excited, and after that, I founded an organization called Fund Texas Choice. It’s very interesting to hear my brainchild be mentioned today by various speakers, but I really did believe at the time that people should have a right to terminate their pregnancies.
But after getting my law degree and after having my children, I thought about it a little bit more and I decided that I couldn’t go along with the idea that an individual person gets to make up their mind on when life begins and [that] its different for everyone depending on how they feel.
She continued (emphasis added):
Texas has already decided that abortion is something that we don’t want here in our state. And I think the other speakers today are missing the point. The other speakers today want abortion to be legal, but this bill is not about that. This bill is about closing the loopholes that already exist.
I know from experience that an abortion access organization is fighting very hard to get around the law; that’s their purpose. The idea is that abortion is difficult to access and so with money and with volunteers it becomes a lot easier, especially for the poor women who can’t afford it otherwise.
And in a way, that’s kind of an alarming admission, right? That specifically they’re helping the poorest women get the most abortions.
Perhaps this admission feels personal to Sheible, as her bio on the pro-abortion Rewire website from 2014 referred to her at the time as “a young, queer, poor mother of color who has experienced and sometimes experiences disabilities.”
Sheible added in her testimony, “I cannot imagine all of the harm I could have done with $500,000, so please make sure that the cities are not funding it.”
Texas law prevents taxpayer dollars from funding abortion; however, Austin and San Antonio have both utilized loopholes in the law that allow them to use taxpayer funds to pay for abortion travel expenses including child care and accommodations.
