 | | Abortion rights advocates protested outside the Texas Capitol in Austin in May, after the bill was signed.Sergio Flores/Getty Images |
|
"It's completely inverting the legal system." |
— Stephen Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas at Austin |
A new Texas law prohibiting most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy — the most restrictive abortion law in the nation — went into effect on Wednesday. |
An emergency application from abortion providers for the Supreme Court to block the law remains pending, and the court is expected to rule on it shortly. |
Wait, back up — remind me what this law is. |
The law, known as Senate Bill 8, amounts to a nearly complete ban on abortion in Texas, making no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from incest or rape. It prohibits doctors from performing abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected. Such activity starts at around six weeks, before many women are even aware that they are pregnant. |
In the emergency application urging the justices to intervene, abortion providers wrote that the law "would immediately and catastrophically reduce abortion access in Texas, barring care for at least 85 percent of Texas abortion patients (those who are six weeks pregnant or greater) and likely forcing many abortion clinics ultimately to close." |
What about protections under Roe. v. Wade? |
Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, and other Supreme Court precedents forbid states from banning abortion before fetal viability, the point at which fetuses can sustain life outside the womb, or about 22 to 24 weeks. |
But the Texas law was drafted to make it difficult to challenge in court. Usually, enforcement would be up to government officials, and if clinics wanted to challenge the law's constitutionality, they would sue those officials in making their case. Senate Bill 8, however, bars state officials from enforcing it and instead deputizes private individuals — including individuals outside Texas — to sue anyone who performs the procedure or "aids and abets" it. |
Really? Ordinary citizens can sue providers and their staff? |
Yes. Though the patient may not be sued, doctors, staff members at clinics, counselors, people who help pay for the procedure, even an Uber driver taking a patient to an abortion clinic are all potential defendants. Plaintiffs, who need not have any connection to the matter nor show any injury from it, are entitled to $10,000 and their legal fees recovered if they win. Prevailing defendants are not entitled to legal fees. |
"It's completely inverting the legal system," Stephen Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Times. "It says the state is not going to be the one to enforce this law. Your neighbors are." |
Why is this happening now? |
This is the latest in a long string of abortion challenges that have played out across the United States in the past decade. Over that period, abortion opponents have scored major victories in state legislatures, with restrictions whittling down access through much of the Midwest and South. The 2021 legislative session has set the record for the most abortion restrictions signed in a single year in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion statistics and supports abortion rights. |
The lawmakers behind those various state-based measures are betting that the Supreme Court's recent shift to the right will rule in their favor and sustain the new laws. The court now includes three members appointed by former President Donald Trump, who had vowed to name justices prepared to overrule Roe v. Wade. |
In its next term, which starts in October, the Supreme Court is already set to decide whether Roe v. Wade should be overruled, in a case from Mississippi concerning a state law banning abortions after 15 weeks. |
Here are three articles from The Times you may have missed. |
 | | Anna Matsumoto of Tokyo is headed to Stanford to study engineering. A bit of a rebel against Japan's cultural expectations, she dyed her hair after graduating high school.Shiho Fukada for The New York Times |
|
- "If only men are changing the world, that's so inefficient." Japan is pushing to digitally modernize itself, but to do that the country must address a severe shortage of technology workers and engineering students — a deficit made worse by the near absence of women. [Read the story]
- "I could see no similarity besides the fact that we're both women in the hard-science space." A generation of female entrepreneurs — particularly those in life sciences, biotechnology and health care — is still operating in the shadow of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos, who now faces trial for fraud. Though Theranos collapsed in scandal in 2018, other female founders are still constantly compared to Ms. Holmes and receive questions about her business. [Read the story]
- "If they are not seeing themselves as a partnership, it's going to be very difficult." How do you make your marriage more financially equal? [Read the story]
|
In Her Words is written by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and edited by Francesca Donner. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Maura Foley. |
|
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home