Texas Abortion Law Takes Effect: Read Both SCOTUS Arguments For Yourself
Planned Parenthood Clinic and Headquarters in Houston, Texas. Photo by Hourick, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
After a flurry of appeals and responses to an ultimately silent Supreme Court, a Texas abortion law described as “prohibiting nearly all abortions” is now in effect.
A controversial Texas law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect at midnight after the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t issue a ruling on it. A group of pro-abortion rights groups and providers had asked the high court on Monday to block it.
The law is one of the nation’s most restrictive, prohibiting nearly all abortions in the state, the abortion rights groups warned.
In addition to outlawing abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, the measure allows private citizens to bring civil lawsuits against anyone who provides an abortion after six weeks or helps a woman access the procedure, such as a friend who drives a woman to obtain an abortion, or clinic staff. Those found in violation of the law are required to pay at least $10,000 to the person who successfully brought the suit.
The pro-abortion rights organizations had warned that, if permitted to take effect, the ban “would immediately and catastrophically reduce abortion access in Texas.” The groups included Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the ACLU and abortion providers. The groups estimated that at least 85% of women who undergo abortions in Texas are at least six weeks pregnant and warned the law would force many clinics to close.
“Patients who can scrape together resources will be forced to attempt to leave the state to obtain an abortion, and many will be delayed until later in pregnancy,” lawyers representing the abortion providers wrote to the Supreme Court. “The remaining Texans who need an abortion will be forced to remain pregnant against their will or to attempt to end their pregnancies without medical supervision.”
Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed the measure into law in May, with Texas joining a dozen other states that have passed laws banning abortions at early stages in pregnancy. Known as “heartbeat bills,” they seek to ban the procedures after a fetal heartbeat can first be detected.
But pro-abortion rights advocates argue the measures, which have been blocked by federal courts from taking effect, are unconstitutional and violate Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion. The court has found a woman can terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability, which generally occurs around 24 weeks.
Abortion rights groups argue the Texas law differs from the others because it incentivizes members of the public, rather than state officials, to enforce the ban, and they claim state lawmakers designed the measure that way to insulate it from federal judicial review.
“Texans, like everyone else in this country, should be able to count on safe abortion care in their own state,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, which runs abortion clinics, said in a statement. “No one should be forced to drive hundreds of miles or be made to continue a pregnancy against their will, yet that’s what will happen unless the Supreme Court steps in.”
The groups’ request for Supreme Court action in the dispute came after a federal appeals court in Texas delayed a district court hearing set for Monday and denied their bid to speed up consideration of the case or stop the law from taking effect pending appeal.
The pro-abortion rights groups warned that without Supreme Court intervention, Texas would be allowed to ban abortions after six weeks before the justices consider a legal battle over an abortion law from Mississippi this fall.
The Supreme Court said in May it would take up a blockbuster dispute over Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, presenting the first test of the limits of abortion access to go before the court’s expanded conservative majority.
The Supreme Court is hearing a Mississippi abortion case this coming term, raising concerns about the future of Roe v. Wade, but the Court has also struck down restrictions on abortion clinics in Louisiana last year.
The request to the Supreme Court, directed at Justice Alito, can be read here:
texas abortion law
And Texas response can be read here:
Texas abortion law
Rich white Texans will still get abortions in state.
Poor white, Latino, and black Texans will still get abortions – either out of state or in-state but under the proverbial table.
This stops nothing.Report
This is in fact the goal.
One class will be protected but not bound, the other bound but not protected.Report
Exactly. Sums up current “Conservative” legal theory nicely.Report
From what I read, SCOTUS and other courts have declined to weigh in on the matter as opposed to offering a ruling one way or another. Given the novelty of the law, that may make sense… they may need to see how it functions in practice before ruling (even though I oppose attempts to restrict abortion access, I recognize that the legal process has to work its magic).
Question #1: Do I have any if that right?
If so, question #2: Doesn’t waiting in a situation like this carry immense costs, different than most other legal matters? Imagine the courts saying, “Let’s give it some time,” and within that time frame a woman is denied access to an abortion because she is passed the 6 week mark, the court eventually blocks the law, but too late for her to pursue an abortion even under the status quo… now what? Do they not consider that scenario?
Really curious to hear some legal analysis from the locals here.Report
I’m not a lawyer, obviously, but the only thing SCOTUS was considering, in this case, was whether to keep the law from going into effect until the district court had heard the case. The district court had already scheduled a hearing and then canceled it, in an obvious attempt to avoid having to hear the case before it went into effect. It will likely end up in the Supreme Court, but not a couple years at least, and therefore it’s now likely to stay in effect until then, rendering abortion effectively illegal in the second largest state, and turning forced pregnancy advocates into vigilantes.Report
The problem with the Texas law and for the Supreme Court (who are conservative but not dumb) is that it provides a neat blue print to get around all constitutional rights. There is no reason why California or Massachusetts could not enact a similar law for gun control or hate speech but have it enforced in a similar way by private parties with 10K or more in damages and the view that defendants do not collect attorneys’ fees if they win at trial.
In fact, California has a law called PAGA which allows private parties to enforce labor code violations that would normally be pursued by the California AG. The thing here is that a percentage of the damages/settlement needs to go to the California Labor and Workforce Department.
Here is a good thread: https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/1433035981934972928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1433035981934972928%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D12002820https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D120028t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20212F092Fthe-center-cannot-hold-3t_e%3DThe20center20cannot20holdt_d%3DThe20center20cannot20hold20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DThe20center20cannot20holds_o%3Ddescversion%3D53c39e0ce65e4eb0af505908f71410f5Report
This is a particularly vile law which can provide a blueprint for other constitutional violations, mainly because it is enforced by private actors who can get at least 10K in damages. The law also expressly fordbids successful defendants from receiving attorney’s fees.
https://www.vox.com/2021/8/31/22650303/supreme-court-abortion-texas-sb8-jackson-roe-wade-greg-abbott
“That path relies on Ex parte Young (1908), a decision in which the Supreme Court established that someone raising a constitutional challenge to a state law may sue the state officer charged with enforcing that law — and obtain a court order preventing that officer from enforcing it. So, for example, if Texas passed a law requiring the state medical board to strip all abortion providers of their medical licenses, a plaintiff could sue the medical board. If a state passed a law requiring state police to blockade abortion clinics, a plaintiff might sue the chief of the state’s police force.
Part of what makes SB 8 such a bizarre law is that it does not permit any state official to enforce it. Rather, the statute provides that it “shall be enforced exclusively through . . . private civil actions.”
Under the law, “any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state,” may bring a private lawsuit against anyone who performs an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, or against anyone who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion.” Plaintiffs who prevail in such suits shall receive at least $10,000 from the defendant.
SB 8, in other words, attempts to make an end run around Young by preventing state officials from directly enforcing the law. Again, Young established that a plaintiff may sue a state official charged with enforcing a state law in order to block enforcement of that law. But if no state official is charged with enforcing the law, there’s no one to sue in order to block the law. Checkmate, libs.”Report
Worse then that, its now legal in Texas to carry a concealed firearm without a permit anywhere you want. To a Judge’s house. To a legislator’s office. TO the home of your ex-girlfriend who just got back from a four day trip to get an abortion in another state because you beat here when you found out she was pregnant. To the house of the friend who drove her there and back.
Texas has completely destroyed the rule of law in the name of preserving political power to and for conservative white males.
SCOTUS helped them.Report
As a pro-life and pro-process/order guy, I’m not a fan of gimcrack legal innovations with unintended downstream consequences, so there are a number of things I could see SCOTUS sending back to TX for non-Abortion related reasons. This seems to be a law that isn’t the sort of law we’d like to see ushered in to general practice (if the summaries I’ve read are accurate).
That said, I think there will be substantive 14th Amendment challenges that will accomplish much the same and will be upheld… the compromise ‘originalist’ position of throwing it back to the states I think is dead. I’ve long said on this site that the power to ‘win’ the Abortion debate was always in the hands of the left… a European model with strict bans after 12-, 16-, or even 20-weeks (even more so if made a State-by-state issue) would have satisfied the mushy middle and deadened the wind. But, I think the Right has learned from the Left and everything will be 14th amendment from here on out. Good luck being on the wrong side of the 14th.Report
” European model with strict bans after 12-, 16-, or even 20-weeks (even more so if made a State-by-state issue) would have satisfied the mushy middle and deadened the wind.”
That’s some….hilarious optimism.
Reminds me of Will Saletan’s bi-yearly screeds on abortion, wherein he’d explain if Planned Parenthood would just focus on contraception and trying to make abortions rarer, the pro-lifers would happily agree to that and everyone would hold hands and applaud.
The fact that he’d suggested Planned Parenthood follow their own freakin’ mission statement was something he seemed incapable of learning, as it was clear to him that of pro-lifers were against all abortions, pro-choice folks must be for aborting babies 24/7 in large, automated factories.Report
One of the big issues that most pundits fail to grasp is the rising tide of illiberal radicalism on the right.
We keep getting treated to “If only the Democrats…” essays where the opening premise is that American democracy is working just fine, the Republicans are respectful of the will of the people and the Democrats just aren’t playing the game very well.
They don’t want to admit that around 30% of the electorate eagerly hungers to impose minority rule by force.Report
You can see it everywhere. Only Democrats have agency.
Conservatives are basically some force of nature. You can’t argue with them, dissuade them, compromise with them. They’re reactionary beasts, with no free will or responsibility.
They can control all three branches of government and you’ll see people talking about “Why won’t Democrats stop bill X” or whatever.
I mean I get why certain pot-stirrers like to deny agency to Republicans — but it’s like baked into the consciousness of every op-ed writer and pundit in America.
Republicans waging an all out war on voting rights in 30 states? “why won’t democrats stop them”. I dunno, man, why aren’t you writing about “Why are Republicans doing this” and “why this is a thing that shouldn’t happen” instead of spilling barrels of ink on why, say, a Democratic minority in Texas can’t use their mind-control powers to make Abbot stop?Report
No, you guys are reading this wrong. My point is pretty simple and the data backs it up… if you want to guaranty 99% access to abortion and remove the worst optics to your cause you take the offer of 1% post 21 week abortions off the table and get everything (but that tiny sliver) as the baseline.
The really strange 30% driving the madness on your side are the weird people who won’t trade the 1%.Report
The “mushy middle”, as you call it, would be happy with your proposal, but then again, the mushy middle is already supportive of the status quo, even in liberal states like California.
Modern Republican politics is impervious to the mushy middle. They have driven all the mushy middles out of the party, and have no need of or desire for them, in places where they have control.
Its no coincidence that this abortion ban and voting restrictions happened together.Report
Putting aside the fact -pro-life people will never give up the various supply side restrictions that make it hard to have an abortion clinic or make it hard for poor women to have the time to get
In addition, the 1% of women who get abortions in the late term are all women who have had terrible news given to them by their doctor, and have incredibly hard choices to make, and no, I’m not going to throw them under the bus, for people who will still protest my friends at abortion clinics and call them murderers.
Those European laws you talk about as a compromise still make it very easy get a late term abortion if somebody needs it. I doubt the pro-life compromise would do so.Report
Yeah I can’t imagine the shrieking that’ll ensue if liberals start instituting this on right wing policies. I imagine gun manufacturers or sellers will make a pretty target rich category for similar end runs around the 2nd amendment in liberal states.
The argument that pro-choicers could simply concede everything beyond the rough lines of the west of the wests settled status quo on abortion seems nonsensical to me. To whit:
A-There is no law or policy to amend. Just a court ruling. So pro-choicers can’t write such a surrender on a piece of paper and mail it to the Supreme Court. They could try and pass a law along those lines but you and I both know that pro-lifers would fight and block such legislation if such an effort was tried and if it was somehow passed they’d immediately try and get it struck down in court.
B- Pro-lifers have always been upfront that they will never compromise on this matter so if Pro-choicers were to fall back to those positions Pro-lifers would simply pocket the gains and continue as if nothing had changed.
Given both those points, why give any ground? As ol’ W said “ya have to fight em over there or else you’ll have to fight them over here.”Report
A percentage of pro-lifers and pro-choicers will never be satisfied without complete victory. That doesn’t mean compromise is impossible though. I mean, there are anarchists and socialists, but somehow we came up with tax rates.Report
What does “complete victory” mean for these supposed pro-choice zealots?
Pro-life victory is obvious: zero abortions. So what’s the opposite? Required abortions?Report
I’d say: no restrictions on US soil, federal funding of abortions worldwide, and no pressure on countries with forced abortions.Report
Can you point me to people who support all of these? Or even anyone who supports federal funding for abortion “worldwide” and “no pressure on countries with forced abortions”? Interested in reading such a person.Report
Mexico City policy? Uyghurs?Report
Opposition to the Mexico City policy doesn’t mean people want the federal government to fund abortions worldwide. And what do the Uyghurs have to do with being pro-choice?
Also, neither of those are pro-choice people. I’m asking for at least one name of a person who has argued that we should fund abortions world wide and not criticize forced abortions. Argued that explicitly. A link would be great.Report
Eh, the opposite is unrestricted abortion on demand.Report
How many folks actually want that?
I don’t mean would-be-okay-with-that. I mean would call everything short of that a loss.Report
As a former libertarian, lemme tell ya, you get accused of wanting things the second you say something like “I don’t think that that should be banned” or “I don’t think that cops should be able to arrest people for that”.Report
I know many who would consider anything less than that an injustice. Hell, I’m one. That said, I’d settle for what Texas had yesterday, which was not unrestricted abortion on demand, over what it has today.Report
To clarify, you’d call anything less than unrestricted abortion on-demand an injustice?
Like, someone being unable to abort a day before their due date an injustice?Report
Yes. I used to think viability was a good cutoff, but viability isn’t a set date, it’s probabilities, and choices have to be made. Ultimately, women should make those choices. I say this knowing that day-before-due date abortions, or even third trimester abortions generally don’t happen, and won’t happen, except under the most extreme circumstances of danger to the woman and a lack of any viability for the fetus.Report
That sortof addresses B, assuming a material proportion of pro-lifers are actually moderate in their pro-life positions which seems somewhat counterintuitive. It doesn’t address A at all. You and I both know a “Western restrictions and allowances for abortion” bill would be blocked in Congress and it’d be pro-lifers who’d be blocking it.Report
Do you think pro-choicers would be signing on to a 2nd and 3rd trimester ban?Report
Well to be precise it’d be a 2nd trimester restriction and 3rd trimester ban, both with strong exemptions for the life of the mother. If it was paired with funding for 1st trimester abortions then it’s very possible pro-choicers would either support it or, at the least, be muddled and not actively opposing it.Report
I guess I’m surprised y’all don’t see it… it has nothing to do with the Pro-Life team granting the other side victory… and it’s not a compromise.
Maybe this will help… the 20wk ban in Ohio that saw a lot of breathless press on the Pro-Choice side as the end of abortion and the Pro-Life side as a massive victory would be the weird sort of end to the very public issue where the side claiming disaster would have won and the team declaring victory would have lost and the status quo would prevail.
According to CDC:
The majority of abortions in 2018 took place early in gestation: 92.2% of abortions were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation; a smaller number of abortions (6.9%) were performed at 14–20 weeks’ gestation, and even fewer (1.0%) were performed at ≥21 weeks’ gestation.
I concede that the ‘issue’ is completely driven as a funding op at this point and things like this prove my point rather than illustrate ‘wishful’ thinking.Report
Like I said to Pinky: a federal law that enacted the western consensus on abortion at a legislative federal level would consist roughly of:
-No restriction at all on abortion at all in the 1st trimester
-An iron clan ban on state level shenanigans’ against abortion providers
-Public funding of abortion in the 1st trimester
-tough restrictions on abortion in the 2nd trimester
-a ban on abortion in the 3rd trimester
-a very clear but narrow exemptions to the restrictions/bans oin 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions for incest/rape/the life of the mother and public funding for abortions in those trimesters that met those narrow exemptions.
If you drew up federal legislation that defined abortion that way it would absolutely be opposed lock step by the pro-life side (and challenged in court if it somehow passed) whereas the pro-choice side would be divided but would (with a bit of jawing from the sponsoring left wing politicians) go along with it.
That is the political reality we live in. Look at those countries we’re using as examples. They all have active minority factions pushing hard to make abortion more restrictive but comparatively little pro-choice pressure to make them more permissive.Report
I have a bad habit of, when I’m arguing with someone and they make a statement that falls into reductio ad absurdum, I take it as proof of my rightness and walk away. I didn’t respond to your point because I find your scenario comically wrong. I can’t imagine a Democrat going along with “common sense abortion control”, and I doubt anyone can. It’s simply completely at odds with reality.Report
Lots of Democrats used to go along with that, but over and over again they got dumped on by Republicans. So they stopped being open, much less vocal about it because it wasn’t getting them anywhere. Its not at all at odds with reality.Report
It doesn’t seem absurd to me. It’s certainly never been tried in the US. Pro-lifers are huge fans of salami slicing abortion restrictions and camel nose abortion narrowing but actual give and take? They’ve never offered.
And, like I said, if such a bill was proposed the energy and passion in opposition to such a proposal would be on the pro-life side. Do you disagree? Honestly?Report
Honestly. Look at Chris’s comments. Read over the Democratic platform and tell me where you see wiggle room.Report
I see the same amount of wiggle room that there is in the Republican platform. On the pro-choice side the argument would be pretty easy to make. Heck, I’d make it myself. Like I said, the pro-choicers wouldn’t love such a deal but I am very confident that if those terms were offered they’d take them. As Marchmaine noted, it’s ludicrously tilted in the pro-choicers favor. And, as I’ve noted, pro-choicers have taken that deal all over the industrialized west.Report
I appreciate you’re looking at some sort of pro-choice negotiated stance, but it’s not a negotiation.
-No restriction at all on abortion at all in the 1st trimester
-a very clear but narrow exemptions to the restrictions/bans oin 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions for incest/rape/the life of the mother and public funding for abortions in those trimesters that met those narrow exemptions.
Total defeat for my team.
But my bigger point, honestly, is the shift to 14th amendment and the abandonment of the Originalist game. Not sure if it comes in to play as early as Mississippi case, but it’s coming. It may take a while, but I think it will win over time.Report
I’m not negotiating here, honestly, what I described is the general western consensus outside of the US. But your comment really does shine the light on the rub of it. A legal regime where abortions are generally permitted and there’s no realistic prospect of banning them through state action is total defeat for pro-lifers. Pro-choicers can, and outside the US- have, accepted far less than complete abortion freedom.Report
Gotcha; I didn’t phrase my comment on negotiating very well… I meant more that there isn’t really a negotiating partner for either side; but the issue will settle close to this line as Personhood and 14th amendment gains traction. How close to 12-weeks or 20-weeks depends, I think, on when the settlement comes. Or not at all.Report
There’s very much a way out for pro-lifers. It just requires the mission to become preventing unplanned pregnancies as opposed to finding ways to bring down the power of the state on people.Report
Eh, I know that a lot of marketing/branding of the Pro-Life side has a Catholic flavor… but most of the Pro-Life movement is already pro-Contraception. Even my numerically insignificant group would trade contraception as a concept. But It doesn’t really do what we think it would do… not in actual practice… but in terms of policy, there’s no significant objection to it in this context.
But the real movement is in a whole-life/whole-woman approach that’s not your 80’s Republican mind-set. It’s more Milennial/GenZ at the moment.Report
Contraception is part of it but I also mean making the case for what I’ll clumsily call standard of living or maybe even cultural solutions. I don’t really believe that our abortion rates are higher than Western Europe just because they’re marginally better at getting contraception to young women, though I’m sure it helps. I think it has just as much to do with social support structures that we are far less consistent about delivering. I am not an expert but there seems to be at least some correlation at the global level between high abortion rates and countries immediately identifiable as having serious social problems.
But say I’m wrong. I’m curious what convinces you that more laws within the structure we live in are going to create a watershed. I’m always reminded of the arguments that we’re just a few gun laws away from Luxembourg’s murder rates. To me it doesn’t seem plausible.Report
This is a “parts of town” thing.
There are parts of town where our gun violence is in line with Luxembourg already.
There are parts of town where you leave your car windows rolled down because it’s cheaper to let anybody who wants in to rifle around your glove compartment and drink holders do so than to buy a new car window every three weeks.Report
Well yea. And I’d be genuinely pleased if tomorrow there were no more abortions, in a similar way I’d be happy about it if suddenly no one ever died of a fentanyl overdose again. I just question how much the law really has to do with it. Certainly not nothing. But as a solution I think it’s a mirage.Report
There are a lot of laws that would have been better off as strongly expressed sentiments.Report
Good questions… my position has been for a long time just what you say: “I think it has just as much to do with social support structures that we are far less consistent about delivering.”
And that’s what I reference in the whole-life/whole-woman short-hand. Much of the Pro-Life movement is already there… willing to spend other people’s money on all sorts of things to help Natalist policies. This ain’t your 80’s program.
As to laws, my comment was clear (I thought) that I don’t think the TX ‘innovations’ are helpful or a good approach.
The offhanded comment that the air would be sucked out of the balloon if the laws were structured such that 99% of all abortions would be legal elicited the predictable response.
The cautionary tale is that once 14th amendment applies to the person in the womb… then all sorts of rights and obligations accrue to that person…
Which obligations… the modern pro-life movement would fund per lots of easily searchable Natalist proposals that touch on lots of different pre-/post-birth and pre-/post-mother support.
You could say that a lot of folks took the criticisms that many pro-choice folks flung our way and agreed it was a gap. Those slings and arrows found their mark, and they aren’t really things many would object to now. But our interest in pro-natalist policies can and does run into conflict with a certain managerial leftist approach – but that’s politics. I think we have better solutions, not necessarily cheaper though. We’ve ditched the Libertarians at long last (but I digress).
…As to politics and the use/abuse of pro-life factions? Well we’re back to the top where I don’t think TX is doing something that will further a better outcome as I expect the process to be nullified by SCOTUS.Report
I got your point on the TX law so no confusion there.
I’m unclear on how the 14th Amendment argument would revolutionize things. Even if we get a precedent that says rights attach at some point prior to birth we’re still in a place where the woman also has constitutional rights, plus our ever evolving medical capabilities with respect to viability. So probably not that different than where we are now. I also think there are far more straightforward legal conclusions limiting the reach of Roe/Casey that don’t require the same kind of revolution in legal thinking. The old overruling it without overruling it. Generally courts hold narrowly where they can and we’re talking about the conservatives who are going to do this. Hard to envision Thomas buying into something like that, but I guess we could get one of those weird plurality opinions with a controlling outcome but without a clearly controlling analysis.
Anyway back to the 99% thing, would that really be a loss in your mind if the actual number was way smaller? Like say we dropped from a rate of ~20 per hundred pregnancies to 5 per hundred but almost all were legal. Is anything more than 0 a failure? I ask because I think it’s important to decide what success would (could?) realistically look like.Report
From a public policy perspective I think this is the right way to think about it. As you note, approx 18%-20% of all pregnancies end in an abortion; this should trigger red-flag and failure warnings on many fronts. So, I’d agree/argue that a better approach would be to treat these as bad outcomes, and that the cultural/policy objectives should be to reduce bad outcomes…
If we could agree on a policy or set of policies that would reduce these outcomes from, say 20 to 10… that would be worth pursuing. 10 to 5? Great. Are we done at 5? Why? What’s driving the last 5? How would those be addressed? Theoretically there will be various ‘floors’ where there’s no good approach… until there is. So philosophically and politically I wouldn’t commit to a ‘quota’ per say… I’d put it that the goal is to reduce bad-outcomes to as close to zero as possible, but should we nuke proposals that move things from 20-10 because it doesn’t take them to 0? Not necessarily; it would depend on the proposal/initiative. [For example, punitive sterilizations might reduce abortions, but not something I’m going to support as good policy]
This is why I’m a culture/process person and not a power/law person… so while I do think Roe was bad legal and political philosophy and that Casey didn’t fix it… I also don’t think that repealing Roe without the cultural shift would produce a lasting improvement.Report
You realize that that 1.0% (the third trimester abortions) are entirely not by choice, right?
We’re talking either totally non-viable fetus or dying mother. Mostly the former.
So those 1.0% would STILL HAPPEN unless you plan to require mothers to carry corpses to term, or to let them (and the fetus) die.
And of course, your “plan” there is entirely a non-starter to the entire pro-life movement, but you’re weirdly casting it like the pro-choicers are the problem here.
You, like Saletan, have offered a solution the pro-lifers will never, ever, EVER take — and blamed the pro-choicers for it not working.
And you seem entirely unable to see that you’ve done that, despite it being blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever interacted with even a handful of folks in the pro-life movement, or read the GOP platform.
But hey, congrats on finding an entirely unworkable solution, blaming the folks who’d accept it for it not being accepted? I mean it’s even worse than “Let’s solve gay marriage by taking the government out of marriage”.Report
If a baby has died in the womb, the procedure is not an abortion. Should make it even easier to legislate then.Report
“If a baby has died in the womb, the procedure is not an abortion. Should make it even easier to legislate then”
1. Yes, it’s still an abortion. That’s what it is medically.
2. Non-viable doesn’t always mean dead in the womb. Often it means won’t survive birth, can’t live outside the womb, or would live only days due to developmental defects (such as, for instance, never developing a brain)
3. Way to ignore every other point to focus on the finest of hair splitting in a way that doesn’t matter AT ALL in real life
4. And you continue to prove my point.Report
The “European model” includes access to basically anybody, anywhere within the first three months, and most of those restrictions have loopholes you can drive a truck through, and friendly pro-choice judges up and down the judicial order in those countries.
So yes, we’d take the “compromise” of publicly funded abortions through the first 3 months, and the resignation of most Federalist Society judges to be replaced w/ pro-choice judges on every single circuit in the country.Report
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1433066759964090375?s=20Report
Saw this:
Given that I refuse to believe that it’s true, it’s a funny tweet.
But if it is true? Hey. Maybe there’s a compromise that can be worked out on the 2nd Amendment!Report
Remember, Texas ALSO had a new law going into effect that you can carry a gun anywhere at anytime without a permit. I suspect a lot of Texan women will have to arm themselves to fight off the bounty hunters that will now be following them to see if the try to access an abortion clinic.Report
Supreme Court votes 5-4 not to provide injunctive relief to plaintiffs seeks to block the Texas law. Roberts sides with Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan in dissent.Report
Roberts is right, states shouldn’t be able to get away with this. Agree or disagree on a right to abortion this puts all civil liberties at risk to anti-civil liberties fanatics on both sides. No reason this can’t be looked at similarly to libel and defamation torts which are quite narrow in America for 1A reasons. They needed to maintain status quo ante.Report
Roberts allowed the Court to overturn Roe absent oral argument or all the natty headlines. Its gonna take a couple weeks for that to sink in, but that’s what has happened. And it means the Mississippi decision tat everyone is anticipating is now almost a moot point. Texas made an evil but brilliant decision to make enforcement a private party matter which means there’s no hope of stuffing the genie back in the bottle.
Republicans won. Feck.Report
That’s inaccurate. Read what they wrote. It isn’t on the merits it’s on the inability to identify who exactly to impose a stay upon. I don’t agree with it and think it’s opening the door for states to grant open season on rights they don’t like, at least temporarily until the litigation is complete.Report
By running this on the shadow docket they never took oral arguments. SO they didn’t intend to get to the merits. And as to the stay imposition, that’s just a cowardly dodge. The Texas law makes it clear who will be harmed by it and it makes it clear that its a state law. So you enjoin the Texas judiciary, since they would have to rule on all the lawsuits.
Its not hard if you want to do it. They don’t want to do it.Report
That’s also inaccurate. This can and almost certainly will be appealed to them on the merits. It just isn’t there yet procedurally, which is the intent of the drafters.Report
That’s going to take years, if it happens. And I don’t see the Texas state judiciary allowing it to happen. Its a private party civil lawsuit. Those have so much wide latitude that I doubt it makes it out of Texas. Again, by design.
And clearly 5 of the SCOTUS justices don’t care about whether it would be appealed thusly.Report
The Texas judiciary can’t prevent it from going to SCOTUS, though they have no obligation to hear it. My guess is that someone will intentionally get themselves sued with the financial backing of pro-choice activists and abortion service providers then each side will appeal it all the way to the top regardless of outcomes in the lower courts.Report
I think it’s bizarre to sue a court judge and clerk. In Roe v. Wade, a pregnant woman wanting an abortion sued the district attorney, i.e. the person responsible for enforcing the laws. She got a stay to preserve the status quo, and fell under the exception for any potential mootness for issues that would otherwise evade review. At least in my state, I think they’d have to sue the Attorney General, the Constitutional officer charged with enforcing the laws of the State.Report
That’s the point of the problem here – in Texas the enforcement of this law is now reserved to private citizens who are allowed to do the enforcing via lawsuits. if you are the plaintiff in such a suit and you win you get $10,000 plus court costs. If the defendant prevails they got nothing under the statute. There is no state official save the judges on whom to lean.Report
Is there any limit on the number of people who can sue? Suppose word gets out the wife of a famous NFL football star on one of the Texas teams has had an abortion since the law went into effect. Can a million Texans sue her?
Or is this a one-time $10,000 fine, only paid to a private party rather than to the state?Report
My read is that its a single party suing other parties, and the winner gets $10,000 per suit not the state.Report
So what keeps a thousand people from filing individual suits in the case of a well-known defendant?Report
nothing i can seeReport
That’s kind of the point. Because an outright ban enforced by the state would almost certainly be stayed by a federal court they’ve attempted to deter abortion by threat of private litigation.Report
This is not a unique issue. States pass laws authorizing private litigation that may be unconstitutional. It is up to the defendant to raise unconstitutionality as a defense, and in states like mine, notify the Attorney General that such a claim is made so as to give the Attorney General the opportunity to intervene if desired to defend the statute. I don’t know of any circumstance where the judge that might hear a case gets sued to block a lawsuit that may or may not happen. And even if you could, its probably not binding on anybody but that judge.Report
Welp, the Attorney General would be involved if there are state constitutionality issues, which there may not be any. For federal constitutional issues, the defendant can remove the case to federal court.Report
Something to consider:
On top of everything else: this Texas law is dysgenic.Report
Liberalism has become the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is being born.Report
Yeah those liberals are always out on the prowl forcing people to have abortions and get gay married.Report
Do you feel comfortable about the above tweet?Report
I feel comfortable w/ women making the reproductive choices that work best for them.
I don’t believe in making women birth babies, they don’t want. Period.
If somebody has a child w/ Down’s Syndrome, unlike conservatives, I don’t believe that person should have to pay a dime in medical costs or home care costs, for that child’s entire life.Report
Abortions are also a lot cheaper than day care of children until they’re functionally illiterate adults funneled into the prison system.
I have no idea why any fiscal conservative would be against that.Report
110% comfortable. Downs syndrome is a clarifying phenomena. The reality is the % of Down Syndrome diagnosis that don’t result in a termination is the -actual- % of true pro-lifers in this or any country. That isn’t a big number. Everything else is just virtue signaling.
And I’m 200% comfortable with individual women deciding, for themselves, if they wish to have children or not under any and all situations. I am entirely and unconflicted pro-choice.Report
There’s a follow up question though. If you aren’t comfortable with the above tweet, what are you comfortable doing about it? Imprisonment? Capital punishment? Something else?
Going there is what got Kevin Williamson fired from the Atlantic but he had groped his way into the real crux of the issue, that being state action.Report
Yes. Thanks to modern genetics we can screen for all manner of deformities and diseases well before birth. Parents then can – and do – choose whether to carry to term. ITs not a death sentence for the unborn fetus, nor is it a life sentence for any children that are born. Its a deeply personal decision between a woman, her partner, her physician and God. The state has no business anywhere near that decision.Report
Tay-Sachs is detected at about the same time. Should it be the state’s decision whether to bring a child into the world to live a short, painful, miserable life? Certainly we can’t trust the parents with that decision.Report
TikToker Makes Script to Flood Texas Abortion ‘Whistleblower’ Site With Fake Info
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3x9ba/tiktok-texas-abortion-law-bot-site-ios-shortcut
The whistleblower website for anonymous reporting of abortions has already crashed.
So if anyone here wants to report a certain Mrs. Cecelia Abbot to the Texas Ministry of Reproduction, you may have to wait.Report
Oh, I’m glad we’re coming up with ways around this.
I figured that we were a week or so before some of the gun control states added similar laws to call in your opponents for unlicensed handguns.
This is a good script and an awesome tactic!
BE UNGOVERNABLEReport
That’s where you start reporting law enforcement.Report
BE UNGOVERNABLE
Um, no thanks.Report
Cue George Costanza. “You want to get nuts? Let’s get nuts!’Report