Representatives of 12 abortion rights and civil rights groups, hoping to keep opposed bills from receiving a House vote, delivered petitions signed by more than 15,500 Texans to the Capitol Thursday.

The petitions asking legislators to "stop anti-abortion legislation" went to five Republican members of the House Calendars Committee, which decides which committee-passed bills get a House vote.

"Texas reproductive freedom is not a political pawn," Alexa Garcia-Ditta with NARAL Pro-Choice Texas said, reading from a letter that accompanied the petitions.

TEXAS POLITICS DELIVERED EVERY DAY: Sign up for our Texas Politics email

"These dangerous bills would only serve to stand in the way of Texans and the health care they need, to stigmatize abortion and women seeking abortion care, and to undermine the doctor-patient relationship," she read in the hallway outside the Capitol office of Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, chairman of the Calendars Committee.

The activists hope to stop votes on four bills pending before the committee: House Bill 35, requiring fetal tissue to be buried or cremated; House Bill 200, banning abortion clinics from providing fetal tissue for medical research and adding a state ban on "partial-birth" abortions; House Bill 434, eliminating "wrongful birth" lawsuits; and House Bill 1936, banning taxpayer money for abortion providers and their affiliates.

The groups also oppose House Bill 2962, which is on the Monday calendar for House action, that would create a new, stricter process for reporting abortion-related medical complications.