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Texas clinics on Saturday canceled appointments they had made during a 48-hour reprieve from the most restrictive abortion law in the United States, which was back in effect as tired providers turned back to the Supreme Court.
The Biden administration, which sued Texas for the law known as Senate Bill 8, has yet to say whether it will resume that route after a federal appeals court restored the law on Friday. evening. The latest twist came just two days after a lower Austin court suspended the law, which bans abortions once heart activity is detected, typically around six weeks before some women know they are pregnant. . There are no exceptions for rape or incest.
The White House made no immediate comment on Saturday.
For now at least, the law is in the hands of the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals, which has allowed restrictions to be resumed pending further arguments. Meanwhile, abortion providers and patients in Texas have returned to where they were for most of the past six weeks.
David Trujillo holds a sign as a school bus drives down the street past a building housing an abortion provider in Dallas on Thursday, October 7, 2021. A federal judge has ordered Texas to suspend a new law that prohibits most abortions in the state since September. An order issued Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman suspended the strict abortion law known as Senate Bill 8. A federal appeals court restored the law on Friday night.
(Photo AP / LM Otero)
TEXAS ‘FETAL HEARTBEAT ABORTION LAW RECALLS BY COURT OF APPEAL DECISION
Out-of-state clinics already inundated with Texan patients seeking abortions were again the closest option for many women. Providers say others are being forced to carry pregnancies to term or wait in hopes the courts will repeal the law that came into effect on September 1.
There are new questions too – not least whether anti-abortion advocates will try to punish Texas doctors who performed abortions during the brief window in which the law was suspended from Wednesday to Friday. Texas leaves the application only in the hands of private citizens who can collect $ 10,000 or more in damages if they successfully sue abortion providers who flout the restrictions.
Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, has created a whistleblower line to receive reports of violators. A dozen calls were received after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman suspended the law, said John Seago, the group’s legislative director.
Although some clinics in Texas have said they briefly resumed abortions on patients who were over six weeks old, Seago said his group had no pending lawsuits. He said the clinics’ public statements did “not match what we saw on the ground,” which he said includes a network of observers and crisis pregnancy centers.
“I have no credible evidence at the time of the litigation we would present,” Seago said on Saturday.
Texas had about two dozen abortion clinics before the law came into effect. At least six clinics have resumed performing abortions after six weeks of pregnancy during the stay, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
David Trujillo holds a sign as a bus drives down the street in front of a building housing an abortion provider in Dallas on Thursday, October 7, 2021. A federal judge ordered Texas to suspend a new law that bans most abortions in the state since September. A federal appeals court restored the law on Friday night.
(Photo AP / LM Otero)
ABBY JOHNSON ANSWERS BILLIE EILISH ON ABORTION: UBORN BABY IS ‘NOT’. YOUR. BODY.’
At Whole Woman’s Health, which has four abortion clinics in Texas, CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller said she hasn’t performed the number of abortions her sites have performed for patients beyond six weeks, but that she had put it on “a good number”. She said her clinics were back to following the law and recognizing the risks her doctors and staff had taken.
“Of course we are all worried,” she said. “But we also feel a deep commitment to providing abortion care where it is legal, which is what we have done.”
Pitman, the federal judge who ended Texas law on Wednesday in a dazzling 113-page opinion, has been appointed by President Barack Obama. He called the law an “offensive deprivation” of the constitutional right to abortion, but his ruling was quickly overturned – at least for now – in a one-page order issued by the 5th Circuit Court on Friday night.
That same appeals court previously allowed the Texas restrictions to go into effect in September in a separate lawsuit filed by abortion providers. This time, the court gave the Justice Department until 5 p.m. Tuesday to respond.
It is not clear what happens after that, including when the appeals court will act or whether it will ask for more arguments. Texas is asking the appeals court for a permanent injunction that would allow the law to remain in effect while the case unfolds.
Meanwhile, Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, has urged the Supreme Court to “step in and stop this madness.” Last month, the High Court allowed the law to move forward in a 5-4 decision, although it did so without ruling on the constitutionality of the law.
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A 1992 Supreme Court ruling prevented states from banning abortion before viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, around 24 weeks gestation. But the Texas version has foiled the courts because of its new enforcement mechanism that leaves enforcement to individuals, not prosecutors, which critics say amounts to a bounty.
The Biden administration could send the case back to the Supreme Court and ask it to quickly reinstate Pitman’s order, though it’s not clear whether it will.
“I’m not very optimistic about what might happen to the Supreme Court,” said Carl Tobias, professor of law at the University of Richmond, referring to the chances of the Department of Justice.
“But there aren’t a lot of downsides either, are there?” he said. “The question is, what’s changed since the last time they saw him? There’s this full opinion, this full hearing before the judge and the case file. So that may be enough.”
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