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R/I ~ AA
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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — When Texas’ new abortion law made no exceptions in cases of rape, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott defended it with an assurance: Texas would get to work eliminating rapes.
One year later, Lindsey LeBlanc is busy as ever helping rape victims in a college town outside Houston.
“The numbers have stayed consistently high,” said LeBlanc, executive director of the Sexual Assault Resource Center in Bryan, near Texas A&M University. Despite hiring two additional counselors in the past six months, she still has a waitlist for victims.
“We are struggling to keep up with demand,” she said.
The constant caseloads in Texas are another example of how Republicans have struggled to defend zero-exception abortion bans that are unpopular in public polling, have caused uproar in high-profile cases and are inviting political risk heading into November’s midterm elections. A year since Texas’ law went into effect in September 2021, at least a dozen states also have bans that make no exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
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