Texas bans abortion after six weeks pregnant, restricts minority voting

Texas became the state most influenced by the ultra-conservative legacy of former President Donald Trump, eight months after leaving the White House. Almost simultaneously this week, two laws were passed making Texas now the state with the highest restrictions on abortion, as well as voting rights and facilities the United States. Similar restrictions have been approved by local legislatures in all Republican-dominated states, but this is the first time courts have determined the initiatives are legal and can go into effect. A post that further promotes the divide between the liberal-democratic and ultra-conservative republican sectors and a victory for the latter who remain convinced that Biden “stole” the election from Trump. Specifically, President Joe Biden said in a statement that the new abortion law “Flagrant violation” of the Constitution.

The almost total ban on termination of pregnancy in Texas authorizes any private citizen to sue an institution or a doctor who performs abortion for breaking the law, which opens the door to prosecutions from pro-life “vigilantes” who could end up shutting down most clinics in the state. “It’s amazing that the politicians in Texas get away with this devastating and cruel law that will harm so many. Access to abortion is going to become total chaos, ”Amanda Williams, executive director of abortion advocacy group Lilith Fund, told Dallas Morning News. “Unfortunately, the people who need access to a safe and free service the most are the ones who will have it the least.”

Senate Bill 8, passed by the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature and promulgated by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May and now ratified by the Supreme Court, prohibits abortion once embryonic heart activity is detected, which is approximately six weeks, and does not provide exceptions for rape or incest. Last-minute calls to stop the initiative through an appeal to the United States Supreme Court have been unsuccessful.

In this way, Texas first to ban abortion so early in pregnancy since the first such legislation was passed in 1973. Although a dozen other states have passed similar bills on the “heartbeat”, all have been blocked by the courts. Opponents of the measure say it will prevent the majority of Texas women, 85%, from accessing medical care for an abortion as do not know they are pregnant at six weeks.

The Texan version is also new in the sense that is intentionally designed to protect government officials enforcement and, therefore, make legal challenges more difficult. Instead, he encourages any U.S. citizen to bring a civil action against any abortion provider or anyone who “Help or encourage” procedure.

Planned Parenthood, which has 11 clinics statewide and Whole Woman’s Health, along with four others, said abide by the extreme law even if it is against their best medical practice. In the days before the law was passed, clinics in Texas said they were forced to turn away patients pending the court ruling and to make sure they were not breaking the law. Most of the doctors who work in these centers will not continue to provide care. “In order not to endanger their means of subsistence”, said clinic founder Amy Hagstrom Miller.

“We will all obey the law, even if it is unethical, inhuman and unjustGynecologist Ghazaleh Moayedi told Guardian America. “It threatens my livelihood and I hope they will sue me. But my biggest fear is making sure that the most vulnerable in my community, the black and Latino patients I serve, are are more at risk due to logistical and financial barriers, get the care they need. “

The law will force most patients to travel out of state for treatment, increasing the distance by car to an abortion clinic by twenty: from an average of 20 kilometers to 400 kilometers, according to the Guttmacher Institute. And that is only if patients have the resources to do so, including time off, the ability to pay for the procedure, and in some cases to care for their other children.

Abortion fund support groups – which help fund travel, accommodation, and direct services for low-income women through donations – have spent the past four months organizing service with clinics in other states like New Mexico and Colorado, to ensure patients receive timely care. When Texas banned most abortion procedures amid the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, the number of patients who traveled out of state for treatment climbed almost 400%.

Leading reproductive rights organizations have warned that the American pro-life movement has considerably radicalized and he’s working to spread his ideology around the world. “In the 1990s, we saw anti-abortion theocratic militant groups like Operation Rescue and Operation Save America, and they were pretty violent,” said Anu Kumar of Ipas, an international non-governmental organization working to expand the access to contraception and abortion. “This recent rebound is an even more drastic version of what we saw then, They’re not your mother’s pro-life groups anymore, they’re worse”.

Since Donald Trump stepped down as president, and as the United States has suffered one of the world’s worst Covid epidemics, Republican legislatures have strived to make 2021 the most abortion-hostile year since that the procedure was legalized nationally in 1973 with the famous Supreme Court. resolution of “Roe vs. Wade. States adopted 90 abortion restrictions in 2021, breaking the previous record of 89 in 2011.

With regard to voting restrictions, which primarily harms black and Hispanic minorities, the Texas Legislature passed legislation that will impose significant new restrictions on voting access in the state. The restrictions will be in addition to those already in place in Texas, which has some of the most complicated voting requirements of the United States and was among the states with the lowest voter turnout in 2020. The Texas House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a final form of the measure by 80-41. The Senate quickly followed with an 18-13 vote. The bill, almost identical to a measure that was approved by the legislature last week, forbidden to keep polling centers open 24 hours a day and to vote from the car. It also imposes sanctions on election officials who submit postal ballot requests and gives more power to election observers. All these measures have been approved in recent years and increase in minority vote in favor of Democrats. The law was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, who has already announced he will pass it.

The more conservative lawmakers who introduced the bill did so on the basis of cases like Crystal Mason, a woman from Fort Worth, who was sued and sentenced to five years in prison for voting by mistake when he was ineligible in 2016 or Hervis Rogers, who waited seven hours online to vote in 2020, but he was unable to do so because he was on probation for a felony conviction in 1995. When these cases and bills were dealt with in July, lawmakers in the Democratic State Chamber left the country. State and flew to Washington DC, for do not give a quorum and avoid the procedure. What is america it’s called “obstruction”, a series of judicial maneuvers to interrupt a legislative process. It was pointless.

The Republicans responded with another very subtle “filibuster”. All statistics show that between 85% and 90% of abortions are performed after six weeks of pregnancy. By passing this law, they know that They “practically” end the law in Texas. They also understand that the approved measures severely limit Democrat voting and set an important precedent for this to set an example for the other eight Republican-dominated states.

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