The Supreme Court allowed a Texas law that bars most abortions after six weeks to remain in place last month, but it agreed to hear oral arguments on the law today.
The law, banning abortions often before a woman knows she is pregnant is in stark contrast to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision legalizing abortion nationwide prior to viability, which can occur at around 24 weeks of pregnancy.
In agreeing to hear the case under such an expedited time frame, the court said that it would focus specifically on the unusual way in which the Texas legislature crafted the law. It also said it will review whether the US Justice Department can challenge the law in court.
Texas officials are barred from enforcing it. Instead, private citizens — from anywhere in the country — can bring a civil suit against anyone who assists a pregnant person seeking an abortion in violation of the law.
In court papers, lawyers for the clinics have detailed the impact of the law on women in Texas.
In sworn declarations, abortion providers said the law has had a chilling effect because staff are “plagued by fear and instability” and “remain seriously concerned that even providing abortions in compliance with S.B. 8 will draw lawsuits from anti-abortion vigilantes or others seeking financial gain” under the law’s enforcement provision, which offers at least $10,000 in damages.
Providers in neighboring states said under oath that they have been overwhelmed with patients traveling from Texas seeking abortions. When Judge Robert Pitman of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas temporarily blocked the law earlier this month, he said that from the moment it went into effect, “women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution.”
The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, however, stayed Pitman’s ruling, allowing the law to go back into effect.
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