The answer depends on what Democrats do next.
www.nytimes.com
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Has Texas Spelled the End of Abortion Rights in America?
Sept. 2, 2021
By
Spencer Bokat-Lindell
Mr. Bokat-Lindell is a staff editor.
This article is part of the Debatable newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
The Supreme Court late Wednesday night took a break from its summer recess to allow the most restrictive abortion law in the nation to take effect in Texas, raising alarm among people who support abortion rights — and even some who don’t.
Abortion access in the United States has been on the decline for many years now: The 2021 legislative season set a record for the most abortion restrictions signed into law in a single year in the United States, according to the
Guttmacher Institute. So why is the Texas law different, and what does it portend for the future of abortion rights in the United States? Here’s what people are saying.
A very unusual law
Known as Senate Bill 8, the Texas law prohibits doctors from performing abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually possible
four weeks after conception, or just two weeks after a missed period. Because that is before many even know they are pregnant — and because the law makes no exceptions for rape or incest — it amounts to a nearly complete ban of abortion in Texas.
In its level of restriction, the Texas law is not unprecedented: Several states, including
Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio, have passed similar “heartbeat bills” in recent years.
But two Supreme Court precedents — Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that affirmed that right — forbid states from banning abortion before a fetus reaches viability, or about
20 to 22 weeks after conception, so federal judges blocked those laws from taking effect.
The Texas law, however, was designed to avoid constitutional challenge. As The Times’s Adam Liptak
explains, plaintiffs seeking to block a law on constitutional grounds would usually name state officials as defendants. But the Texas law bars state officials from enforcing it, effectively circumventing Roe v. Wade.
Instead, the law deputizes private individuals — including individuals outside Texas — to sue anyone who performs the procedure or “aids and abets” it. The patient may not be sued, but doctors, clinic staff, counselors, people who help pay for the procedure, even an Uber driver who takes a patient to an abortion clinic all could be. Plaintiffs, who do not need to have any connection to the abortion at issue, are entitled to at least $10,000 and attorney’s fees. Defendants, on the other hand, have to pay their own way even if they win.
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