For decades, the Christian-right foot soldiers who form the backbone of the Republican Party have regularly and enthusiastically showed up for legislative battles over religious freedom and reproductive and LGBTQ rights. On September 1, they scored one of their biggest victories yet: the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and deputizes private citizens to report anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion.
Six days later, religious conservatives celebrated another critical legislative victory, one that signaled a new frontier in their movement. In the east Texas city of Tyler, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Election Integrity Protection Act of 2021, passed in late August after Democrats fled the state in a futile effort to stop it. The new law severely restricts voting access in Texas, with the biggest impact on voters of color; Abbott hailed it as a “good paradigm for other states to follow.”
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