LUCIO: NOTHING A GOOD HANGER CAN'T TAKE CARE OF

 By Juan Montoya
It always amazes me how self-serving and hypocritical some of our local politicians are.
One who comes immediately to mind in none other than our loved and much-esteemed Texas Senator Eddie Lucio.
That's him in the graphic above attending a "Stand with Texas Women" rally held at the Cameron County Women's Democratic Club for Lt. Gov. candidate Leticia Van De Putte.
The Stand With Texas Women Campaign was started to call attention to the Texas Legislature's passing of laws restricting women's (especially poor women's) access to abortions. One of the laws that was passed was the requirement that women be subjected to an hour-long video of the joys of adoption before they can go through the procedure to end a pregnancy. It's basically a guilt-trip message passed by anti-choice legislators compliments of the taxpayer.
Another part of the law – and one that has just been declared unconstitutional by Judge Lee Yeakel of the United States District Court in Austin, Tex., required abortion clinics to meet the costly building and staffing standards of ambulatory surgery centers, that, as the 2013 law required, would place unconstitutional obstacles to women’s access to abortion. The requirement, which many medical experts said was unnecessary for patient safety, was supposed to take effect on Sept. 1, and it would have forced about 12 of the state’s remaining 19 abortion clinics to close.
In his decision, Judge Yeakel also partly rolled back a rule already in effect, a requirement that abortion clinic doctors have admitting privileges at local hospitals. That requirement, also described by medical experts as irrelevant to patient safety, has caused more than 20 clinics across Texas to close.
News reports indicate that Judge Yeakel said the admitting-privilege rule should definitely not be applied to clinics in McAllen and El Paso. The evidence was clear, he wrote, that the rule had left women in South and West Texas with little practical access to abortions.
Hispanic and low-income women in the Rio Grande Valley, many of them working mothers, have been most affected by the closing of the McAllen clinic, according to Amy Hagstrom Miller, chief executive of Whole Woman’s Health.
The one Democratic senator who went along with the Republican majority in denying access to the mostly Hispanic and poor women in South Texas was Lucio. He defended his position by saying his religious upbringing and convictions prevented him from supporting the Democratic stand.
Yet, there he was with Van Putte and the rest of the Brownsville legislative delegation (Rene Oliveira) and the chair of the Texas Democratic Party Gilberto Hinojosa rubbing elbows with Van De Putte at the pro-choice rally.
We've written on the subject before and respect the right of those who are against abortion. But we also respect the legal right of those women who choose not to carry through a pregnancy. They have their reasons and it's bad enough for them to carry that psychological burden without us (males especially) trying to force our beliefs on them on top of that.
Lucio thinks that all women should be forced to carry the pregnancy to its end regardless of their circumstance or personal choice.
He probably figures that a child should have the privilege of living in his district where nearly half of the children suffer a life of poverty.
Senate District 27 includes all of Cameron, Kenedy, Kleberg, Willacy counties and part of Hidalgo county.
Hidalgo County reported that 130,291, or 47.9 percent of children living there live in poverty.
Cameron County is not much different, reporting that 62,449, or 46.7 percent of children there are also poor.
Willacy County reported that 2,502, or 43.3 percent of children lived in poverty there.
Kenedy County actually fares better because of its smaller population, with 30 children, or 27.3 percent reported living in poverty.
These children of poor families reflect a sad truth, that while the Texas right-to-work economy is rising, the parents have to face unemployment rates higher than the state and nation.
Hidalgo County reported that it has 38,095 people unemployed, a 12 percent unemployment rate.
Cameron County is just behind Hidalgo with 19,171 listed as unemployed, or an 11.8 percent unemployment rate. Willacy County reported 1,351 of its residents out of work, a 14.3 percentage rate.
And Kenedy County reported the lowest rate with 131 people out of work for a 8.6 percentage rate.
That the good senator has been since 1990 and before that he served two terms (four years) as a state representative and amass these kind of sorry economic statistics is horrendous.
That's a total of 28 years in the Legislature and his constituents have sorry little gains to show for his presence there.
In fact, his hometown (Brownsville) has been named the poorest community in the entire United States.
If after more than a quarter century in Austin he hasn't been able to deliver the goods, how on earth does he have time to worry whether a poor woman in his district decides whether she want to bring a child into this region of poverty or not?