A Texas law that bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect Wednesday, as a midnight deadline for the Supreme Court to stop it came and went without action.
The lawsuits that stopped those laws targeted government officials who would enforce the bans, which proponents dub “heartbeat bills” because they say that is when a doctor can first detect a fetal heartbeat. Doctors opposed to the bills dispute that description, saying the fluttering that is detected cannot exist outside the womb.
The court could still grant a request from abortion providers to halt the law, one of the nation’s most restrictive. But for now, abortion providers in Texas, including Planned Parenthood and Whole Woman’s Health, said they will no longer terminate pregnancies more than six weeks from a woman’s last period.
Providers said the law effectively eliminates the guarantee in Roe v. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court decisions that women have a right to end their pregnancies before viability, and that states may not impose undue burdens on that decision.
As longtime opponents of abortion claimed Wednesday as “a historic and hopeful day,” abortion-rights advocates and providers decried the impact of the new law on the women they serve.
“It’s just really unclear what the future will hold for women in Texas,” said Kathy Kleinfeld, the director at Houston Women’s Reproductive Services. “I really don’t know. I don’t feel pessimistic. I don’t feel optimistic. I’m just right in the middle, cautiously waiting.”
Human Coalition Action Texas Legislative Director Chelsey Youman, who backed the bill, praised Texas as “the first state to successfully protect the most vulnerable among us, preborn children … Human beings are worthy of protection at all phases of development.”
Federal judges across the country have cited Roe and other precedents to block six-week bans in other states before they took effect.
The Texas law was designed to make it more difficult for abortion rights advocates to win such pre-enforcement injunctions. The statute empowers individuals, instead of state government officials, to bring legal action against those who help women seeking a prohibited abortion.
Lawyers for abortion providers told the Supreme Court that the statute, known by its bill number, S.B. 8, would “immediately and catastrophically reduce abortion access” in Texas and probably force more clinics to close. The law is unconstitutional, they say, because it conflicts with the court precedents that prevent states from banning abortion before a fetus would be viable outside the womb, usually around 22 to 24 weeks.
About 85 to 90 percent of people who obtain abortions in Texas are at least six weeks into pregnancy, meaning this law would prohibit nearly all abortions in the state.
“Patients will have to travel out of state — in the middle of a pandemic — to receive constitutionally guaranteed health care. And many will not have the means to do so,” Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), said in a statement. “It’s cruel, unconscionable, and unlawful.”
In response Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to act against the law at this point, and that any legal challenges would have to wait until someone actually brought a civil action against an abortion provider or someone who aids the woman.
“This Court cannot expunge the law itself. Rather, it can enjoin only enforcement of the law,” he wrote in his brief to the court, which did not mention Roe. But in the Texas case, he noted, government officials “explicitly do not enforce the law.”
The abortion providers, Paxton wrote, “have not shown that they will be personally harmed by a bill that may never be enforced against them by anyone.”
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