Biden administration plans to sue Texas for near total abortion ban – report | Texas

The Biden administration plans to sue Texas for the state’s extreme abortion law, which amounts to a near-total abortion ban, according to a report.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department could file a complaint on Thursday, just over a week after the law came into force.

Senate Bill 8, passed by the Texas Republican-dominated legislature, bans abortion once embryonic heart activity is detected, which is approximately six weeks. Most women don’t know they are pregnant right now.

According to the Journal, the Justice Department will argue that the law, which makes no exceptions for rape or incest, “unlawfully interferes with federal interests.”

On Monday, United States Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department would “protect those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services,” under a federal law known as freedom of access to clinic entrances.

Garland said the law would be enforced “to protect the constitutional rights of women and others, including access to abortion.”

Texas law urges any private citizen to sue an abortion provider or anyone deemed to have assisted a woman to have an abortion in violation of the law. It went into effect on September 1 and survived an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, which voted 5-4 to allow the law to remain in force.

Joe Biden condemned the new law and reaffirmed White House support for the right to abortion. “This extreme Texas law flagrantly violates constitutional law established by Roe v Wade and maintained as precedent for nearly half a century,” Biden said in a statement.

The Biden administration has since come under pressure to act, with Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee writing to Garland on Tuesday.

“The Department of Justice cannot allow individuals seeking to deny women the constitutional right to choose an abortion to escape scrutiny under existing federal law simply because they are attempting to do so under the guise of state law, ”wrote the Democratic members of Congress, who include Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Washington, and Val Demings, Florida.

Texas law is the strictest law enacted against the right to abortion in the United States since the landmark Supreme Court ruling Roe v Wade in 1973. At least 12 other states have enacted early pregnancy bans , but all were prevented from entering into force.

Abortion providers have said the law will likely force many abortion clinics in Texas to close. Women’s rights advocates fear that the Tory-dominated Supreme Court’s lack of action on the law signals the start of Roe v Wade’s end.