"Texas’s statute, by contrast, makes no exception for rape or incest. It permits abortion only to save the life of the mother, and it might be justified on the grounds that the compelling interest in preserving potential human life may yield only to the equally compelling interest in preserving existing human life. Although Texas’s law appears to make fewer exceptions than Georgia’s and therefore seems more devoted to the principle of fetal life, it actually contains a different sort of exemption. It holds doctors liable for performing abortions, but not pregnant women for having them. This exemption cannot be justified as an incentive for women to turn in the doctors who performed abortions on them, for it also applies to women who ingest abortifacients or otherwise perform abortions on themselves. Texas’s statute is thus conspicuously underinclusive given the state’s asserted interests in the protection of fetal life. The most likely reason for the failure to hold women liable is that protection of fetal life was not in fact the statute’s actual purpose. When the statute was originally passed in 1854, its goal was to prevent unscrupulous doctors from injuring women through botched abortions. Medicine was a largely unregulated profession at the time, and quacks abounded, preying on the vulnerabilities and fears of pregnant women. If the original purpose of the statute was the protection of maternal health and safety, Texas cannot justify a total ban on abortions today, for abortions can be performed safely by licensed physicians and are often less dangerous to the woman’s health than carrying the fetus to term."