The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.
On Saturday, abortion rights opponents gathered in the state capitol for the Texas Rally for Life. It was held a day after the national March for Life in Washington. Demonstrators carried signs with messages like “Defund Planned Parenthood.”
Jessie Kile, a Texas A&M student, made her own sign for the rally.
“My sign says ‘21 years ago, I came seconds from being aborted. I was just as human then as I am now’ – I’m not anti-women,” Kile says. ” I understand that they want a right to choose. But I wanted a right to choose too before I was born and I wish that someone would have said that for me.”
Megan Martinez, a college student at Texas State University turned out for the rally too. She had something she wanted abortion rights advocates to consider.
“I would just encourage them to think about the root causes of abortion and how that needs to be solved first,” Martinez says. “The abortion won’t be a solution to the situation that the woman’s finding herself in, but say- government assistance, support from society, the health resources that she needs, that’s more so the solution than an abortion would be.”
A march organizer told the Texas Tribune that about 4,000 people showed up for the demonstration.
And just a day before the Texas Rally for Life – a federal judge blocked the state of Texas from enforcing a rule that would require fetal remains to be cremated or buried. U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks issued a preliminary injunction on Friday. A trial date is expected to be set within the next month or so.
In his order, Sparks wrote even state officials admitted the new regulation had no health benefits. The rule was originally supposed to take effect on Dec. 18 after the state quietly published the proposed regulation back in July.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton vowed to appeal the decision. In a statement, he said, “Texas stands committed to honoring the dignity of the unborn and my office is proud to continue fighting for these new rules.
And in completely unrelated news: Moviegoers at an Alamo Drafthouse Theater in Austin got a pretty big surprise this weekend. Nicholas Cage – that hunter of “National Treasure,” airplane-trapped ex-con of “Con Air,”, and “Moonstruck” love interest of Cher – showed up to C4GED, the fourth annual celebration of his films.
The movie marathon programmer at the Alamo had been trying to get Cage to show up in Texas every year – and this time around finally succeeded. Before joining the audience for a 12-hour movie marathon, Cage did an off-the-cuff rendition of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe.
Cage then proceeded to watch five of his movies – that he had picked himself – with the audience: “Bangkok Dangerous,” “Joe,” “Bringing Out The Dead,” “Army of One,” and “Lord of War.”
