I strongly challenge this. I am under the firm impression that back in 1989 there were people being referred to as woman who are biologically incapable of becoming pregnant, for example due to illness or old age.

@laolux I assume the answer means woman in the context of the law: i.e. a woman known to be pregnant

Yes, @laolux is right, and there most certainly were trans people in the US in 1989 (and presumably prior to that too, but we have records from 1989). We are talking about a date 20 years after the stonewall riots. Law makers most certainly knew about trans women, it's not outlandish to think they knew about trans men.

@Clumsycat Sure they were, and law makers knew. Still, at that time, it wasn't conceivable that anyone would assume any other ordinary meaning of "woman" in the context of that law. No clarification thought to be necessary.

@laolux No need to carp, you know what I meant. Say, to be precise, "a person born with the organs biologically purported for conception, carrying and giving birth to children".

@laolux I'm sure that the authors of the law considered that the ability to become pregnant was available only to women, or, equivalently, that the set of pregnant people is necessarily a subset of the set of women. That some women can't become pregnant doesn't change this. I suspect very strongly that a majority of Texas legislators today would hold that position, too, and that prosecutors would argue that a pregnant transgender man is legally a woman. In addition to this, there is the general rule of statutory construction that calls for male references to include the female and vice versa.

I remember Wendy Carlos (Play Bach, A Clockwork Orange) who was a transgender woman in the early 80’s but definitely before 1989.

I don't think this is the only possible interpretation. For example, when the 2nd Amendment was written "arms" meant muskets and cannon. However some judges interpret the law to include assault rifles and machine guns, that were not envisaged by the writers.

@DJClayworth I don't think that is equivalent. One was not envisaged because the actual thing was not invented at the time even though it falls into the definition of the word used. The other is not envisaged because of a fundamental difference in definition. I don't think anyone can argue against arms meaning weapons and including those things.

@phoog: The set of people who are biologically capable of becoming pregnant is a subset of the set of people who are biologically female at birth.

@supercat what's your point? Are you reacting to something I wrote?

@DJClayworth just because you can prove trans people existed does not lead to presuming they were well enough known, and understood, for it to be expected a bunch of congressmen knew, fully understood the implications, and consciously decided their wording based off of that understanding back then. I'm pretty sure the distinction between sex vs gender hadn't been spelled out, and with that the importance of saying 'women' over 'female' likely wouldn't have had any meaning to them. Even today many seem to struggle with understanding those distinctions.

@dsollen It's more complicated. It's not just sex vs. gender. Would you call a transgender man who is carrying a baby the father or the mother? You could call him the "mother" because that's what he is biologically, but then when the baby gets raised and he acts in a typical male parent role, he would be the "father". And in case of a divorce where the mother usually gets to keep the child, who's the "mother" then? The one who gave birth? It's all a legal mess.

@phoog I never say anything about lawmakers intent or similar. I only claim that at no point in time the set of women was considered to be equivalent to the set of persons who are potentially capable of becoming pregnant and giving birth. Your subset description fits well, but it does not give a definition of what the whole set of women looks like, neither now nor then.

@laolux the membership of that set is not relevant to answering the question, however. If a law applies to a subset (e.g. pregnant women), it doesn't matter that there is a superset (e.g. women) of which some members (as your first comment notes) that are incapable of becoming members of the subset. You're right of course that defining womanhood in terms of childbearing is problematic (at best) in many ways, but people writing anti-abortion laws, even today, are not known for their care in taking such considerations into account.

@gnasher729 The father, anyone in the trans community would be quite clear on that front. The child doesn't have to have a mother, he can have two fathers, or just one father or two mothers. There are more types of families then the traditional nuclear ones out there now of days.

@laolux that's a strawman. "potentially" capable.

> Times change, so do ordinary definitions. But these do not automatically make their way into the laws that were written before the change occurred. So you'd say the second amendment applies to muzzle-loading flintlocks but nothing newer?