By Aaron Miller-
Joe Biden has a tough task of deploying legal counsel from the White House to mount a legal challenge against the Supreme Courts decision to prohibit abortions in the state of Texas.
After Texas announced its anti- abortion law which overruled a three decade precedent in Roe v Wade , enabling law suits to be successfully lodged against anybody who conducts ot facilitates the process of an abortion, the U.S president was both disappointed with the ruling and sympathetic to women whose rights he said will be violated by the new law.
Biden said the ruling delivered “an unprecedented assault on a woman’s constitutional right” in a rebuke of its decision not to consider a Texas law that effectively bans abortions after six weeks.
The law is undoubtedly one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the US in five decades, and has sparked controversy in Texas and other parts of America. The likelihood for copycat laws in other cities is worrying for those who feel women are being denied an important right.
The court has already delivered a 5-4 decision , denying an emergency appeal from abortion providers, and in the process dashing any last minute hope for women in Texas wanting to have an abortion.
In a statement, Biden pledged his administration would act to “ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions” as protected by the landmark Roe v Wade ruling in 1973.
He said the new legislation empowered private citizens in Texas to sue healthcare providers, family members supporting a woman exercising her right to choose after six weeks, or “even a friend who drivers her to a hospital or clinic”.
“It unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impact,” Biden said.
The president said he would direct the Office of the White House Counsel to “launch a whole-of-government effort to respond to the decision”, including directing the federal justice and health departments to see “what legal tools we have to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas’s
Biden was heavily critical of the new law which he said ”, adding that it actually empowers complete strangers to inject themselves into the most private of decisions made by a woman—it actually incentivizes them to do so with the prospect of $10,000 if they win their case.
For the majority to do this without a hearing, without the benefit of an opinion from a court below, and without due consideration of the issues, insults the rule of law and the rights of all Americans to seek redress from our courts.
Rather than use its supreme authority to ensure justice could be fairly sought, the highest Court of our land will allow millions of women in Texas in need of critical reproductive care to suffer while courts sift through procedural complexities.
”The dissents by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan all demonstrate the error of the Court’s action here powerfully ‘he said.
fellow supreme court Sonia Sotomayor, who voted against the majority and , called the decision “a breathtaking act of defiance – of the constitution, of this court’s precedent and of rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas” in her dissenting opinion.
Signed in May by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, the law prohibits abortions once embryonic cardiac activity is detected by medical professionals, usually around six weeks of pregnancy. Reproductive health experts believe that the ban will prevent 85% of pregnant women, particularly low-income women, from getting an abortion in the state, which has a population of 29 million.
In October, the court is expected to decide on a law in Mississippi that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
. Instead of having the government outright restrict abortion, it relies on private citizens to carry out the ban. The law allows private citizens to sue not only abortion providers but also anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure – a wide-ranging net meant to deter anyone from even assisting a women from getting an abortion with the threat of legal action.
“Democrats can either abolish the filibuster and expand the court, or do nothing as million of people’s bodies, rights and lives are sacrificed for far-right minority rule,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “This shouldn’t be a difficult decision.”
The night before the law went into effect, some abortion providers reported carrying out abortions until midnight, with their waiting rooms full of patients trying to get abortions while the procedure was still legal.