By Aaron Miller-
The U.S Supreme Court early on Wednesday controversially permitted Texas to prohibit abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.The court’s decision to reject an emergency petition from Texas abortion clinics comes as the justices prepare to reconsider the right to an abortion it established almost 50 years in case law.
In May, justices agreed to review Mississippi’s ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy — a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Those arguments are expected later this year, with a ruling in 2022.
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The law prohibits abortions whenever an ultrasound can detect what lawmakers defined as a fetal “heartbeat,”, though medical and legal experts say this term is misleading because embryos don’t possess a heart at that developmental stage.
Beyond outlawing abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, the Texas law, signed in May,also empowers citizens to file civil suits against abortion providers or anyone who helps facilitate the procedure after six weeks, such as a person who drives a pregnant person to the clinic.
Individuals found to have violated the law would have to pay $10,000 to the person who successfully brings such a suit a bounty abortion rights advocates warn will encourage harassment, intimidation and vigilantism.
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Providers and abortion rights advocacy are fightingv for the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the state.”
In one sense, the fight over Texas’s anti-abortion law, known as SB 8, is familiar. A Republican-led state enacted a restriction on abortion that violates existing Supreme Court precedents. Pregnant people in the state lose access to reproductive health care.
The new law, saying that this would affect at least 85% of the abortions taking place in the state because many people don’t know they are pregnant within the first six weeks.
Texas will not automatically enforce the law, but empowers private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone involved in aiding or abetting an abortion after a “heartbeat” is detected.
The new law is a big boost to pro life activists who have been campaigning against abortion for decades. Critics have lambasted the fact anti abortionists are not sympathetic to rzpe victims.
Some observers believe the me humanism could circumvent Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, within some limits.
Attorneys from Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Whole Woman’s Health, another abortion provider involved in the case, said the uncertainty around the law has created “chaos on the ground.”
Doctors and providers plan to remain at Whole Woman’s Health clinics in Texas until 11:59 p.m. Tuesday to provide abortions before the law took effect and the clinics’ waiting rooms were “filled with patients and their loved ones,” the organization said on Twitter
Whole Women’s Health have made submission to the justices in a court filing that the rule will “unquestionably contravenes this Court’s precedent and will cause clear harm beginning at midnight tonight, with abortions after six weeks banned throughout Texas — something that has never been allowed to occur in any other state of the nation in the decades since Roe.
“Through no fault of their own, thousands of pregnant Texans will lose constitutionally protected access to abortion in mere hours unless this Court acts,” the group added. “Applicants and their patients urgently need relief.”
Planned Parenthood will try to keep clinics open, staff attorney Julie Murray said. But there is a chance that some abortion clinics will begin closing, said Helene Krasnoff, vice president of public policy litigation
In the meantime, Travis County District Judge Amy Clark Meachum issued a temporary restraining order in a separate case, barring the anti-abortion organization Texas Right To Life; John Seago, its legislative director; and others from “organizing, encouraging and filing lawsuits” against a Dallas attorney and nonprofit organization.
But Seago and Texas Right to Life, the biggest anti-abortion organization in the state, do plan to start suing those they believe violate SB 8. The organization has even set up a whistleblower website, where anyone can file anonymous tips about illegal abortions.
Thousands of people from around the world were attracted to the site last August, following a tweet that went viral. The tweet also attracted fraudulent claims
Even if the Supreme Court were to block the law after Sept. 1, Seago said abortion providers could still be held “legally accountable” for abortions performed after the law took effect but before the high court acted.
Providers and doctors also worry about frivolous lawsuits that could financially ruin them and their employees. Individuals who file lawsuits under SB 8 don’t have to provide a personal connection to whomever they sue. Seago said Texas Right to Life does not plan on filing frivolous lawsuits.
Beyond outlawing abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, the Texas law, signed in May, would deputize citizens to file civil suits against abortion providers or anyone who helps facilitate the procedure after six weeks, such as a person who drives a pregnant person to the clinic. Individuals found to have violated the law would have to pay $10,000 to the person who successfully brings such a suit — a bounty abortion rights advocates warn will encourage harassment, intimidation and vigilantism.
The citizen enforcement scheme also made the law more difficult to challenge in court.
Tthe groups challenging Texas’ law, including Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, plan to persevere with their fight. but warn that millions of Texas women will lose access to the procedure as the case .
ome people who won’t be able to travel out of state to receive the procedure.
The average distance an abortion patient will have to travel once the law goes into effect will grow from 12 miles to 248 miles, according to a study by the reproductive rights research organization The Guttmacher Institute.
The clinics will need to hire lawyers to defend themselves, and if those civil lawsuits are successful, state courts can shut the clinics down. The measure also includes a provision that will prevent clinics, even if they prevail in court, from recouping their attorney fees from their legal opponents.
“The kinds of people that are going to bring these lawsuits are the people my staff see every day,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, the president of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas and is suing in federal court to block the law. “They scream at them on the way to work, they know their names, they know what car they drive, and so this isn’t abstract to our clinic staff and physicians.”
Texas Right to Life is planning to launch a tip line for people to report evidence that the ban has been violated and Seago, the legislative director, also said that he is anticipating that “sidewalk counsellors,” in his words, and the counsellors at pregnancy centers could being involved in the lawsuits as well.
Additionally, the law exposes to the civil damages anyone who “knowingly … aids or abets” in the performance of abortion after the heartbeat is defected, even as it excludes from liability the woman who received the abortion.
The language is vague but has prompted fears that family members who drive patients to receive abortion or donors to abortion funds that help pay for the procedure will be vulnerable to civil litigation.
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