In a narrow ruling that still keeps in place the near-total ban on abortions in Texas, the State District Judge David Peeples of Austin ruled on Thursday that the enforcement mechanism behind the strictest abortion law in the nation is unconstitutional.
Judge Peeples decided to sidestep the broader legality of the Senate Bill 8, as the Texas law is known, which has banned since September abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy or once a cardiac activity is detected.
According to the law, which prohibits enforcement by prosecutors, private citizens are entitled to $10,000 if they bring a successful lawsuit against a provider or anyone who enables a patient to obtain an abortion.
Though anyone can file a lawsuit, the patients seeking abortions cannot be sued.
The novel enforcement mechanism Texas law uses essentially allows it to outmaneuver Supreme Court precedent over a women’s constitutional right to abortion.
Planned Parenthood was among the abortion providers that have asked – so far unsuccessfully- the US Supreme Court to block the law and has now praised Judge Peeples’s ruling but underscored that abortion in Texas still remains virtually inaccessible.
Other opponents of the law signed by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott said the ruling will hardly have any practical impact or even discourage lawsuits against abortion clinics.
John Seago, legislative director of Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group noted that this ruling changes nothing on the ground.
Meanwhile, it’s not clear where the procedure stands inside the Supreme Court, though, considering there’s no action so far, it seems clear the court lacks the majority- at least five votes- in the nine-member body to put the Texas law on hold.
The justices, which typically exchange and revise opinions privately on both sides before handing down a decision, have refused by a 5-4 vote abortion providers’ appeal to keep the law from taking effect.
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