(New York) Despite their valiant efforts, Texas Republican elected officials failed to protect a controversial abortion law from federal court scrutiny. But they haven’t lost anything yet, far from it.
In a ruling Friday morning, the US Supreme Court allowed abortion clinics in Texas to appeal to a federal trial judge in law in that southwestern state that bans most abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy.
However, far from celebrating this decision, it was greeted by activists and pro-choice groups with a good dose of pessimism. Because the highest US body has not simply refused to block this law that delegates the power to enforce it for ordinary citizens, with the possibility of a reward of at least $10,000 in the event of conviction.
It also gave abortion clinics a narrow path only to challenge it. That is, even if the procedure would violate a constitutional right granted by ruling “Roe v. Wade” which legalized abortion in the United States in 1973 until fetal survival, approximately 22 weeks.
It’s amazing that the Supreme Court has essentially said that the federal courts cannot stop the system of bounty hunters that was adopted to flagrantly deny Texans their constitutional right to abortion.
Nancy Northup, President of the Center for Reproductive Rights
The Court has abdicated its duty to ensure that states do not appeal its decisions. This six-week ban has been in effect for 100 days now, and today’s decision means that there is no end in sight,” continued M.I up north.
All of the Supreme Court justices, with the exception of the ultra-conservative Clarence Thomas, cleared the way for the Texas law to be challenged in the federal courts. But a majority of five conservative justices ruled out a possible trial of several Texas officials, including the attorney general, judges and state court clerks. Only officials authorized to take disciplinary action against abortion clinics can be prosecuted.
They are four in number.
Heirs of John C. Calhoun
This was the third time the Supreme Court had refused to block a Texas law. The authority had rejected it for the first time on the day it came into force, on 1is being last September.
As was the case in September, progressive Justice Sonia Sotomayor voiced her dissent, excluding neither Texas lawmakers nor her colleagues on the Supreme Court.
Referring to women in Texas who could not afford to travel to another state to have an abortion, she wrote, “The only alternative for them is to terminate an unwanted pregnancy or attempt a voluntary abortion. Outside the medical system.”
The court should have put an end to this insanity months ago, before SB 8 came into effect. It failed then, and it continues to fail today.
– Sonia Sotomayor, progressive judge
In a fiery segment of her opposition, a Bronx investigative judge criticized members of the court’s conservative bloc for playing for politicians who are now adopting tactics similar to those of John Calhoun, the great defender of slavery in the nineteenth century.e a century.
“It is a stark challenge to our federal structure,” she wrote of Texas law. Elle fait écho à la philosophie de John C. Calhoun, un virulent défenseur du Sud esclavagiste, qui insistait sur le fait que les États avaient le droit d’apposer leur “veto” ou d’éta le le leienté annuleré Unlike. “
By signing off on the majority opinion, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch ignored Justice Sotomayor’s harshest attacks. He explained that the Supreme Court’s decision was procedural in nature, nothing more.
“In this initial case, the Court is not considering the final substantive question – that is, whether SB 8 is compatible with the Federal Constitution. The wisdom of the eighth session of the Subsidiary Body as public policy is also not on the agenda.”
The Other Law of Abortion
Supporters of the selection had another reason to be pessimistic about the Supreme Court’s ruling. At the end of June or the beginning of July, this law will pass a resolution on another abortion law, the Mississippi law, which may render the question of Texas completely irrelevant.
Discussed in early December in the Supreme Court, a Mississippi law bans most abortions after the 15the week of pregnancy. In its long-awaited decision, the Supreme Court can fulfill the great dream of the conservative and Christian right by abolishing “Roe v. Wade.” Such a decision would put an end to any discussion of Texas law.
Another possible scenario is that a conservative majority could maintain ‘Roe v. Wade’ while questioning the criterion of fetal viability. By doing so, she could ratify not only Mississippi law, but possibly Texas law as well.
Meanwhile, opponents of abortion in Texas received the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday more favorably than their opponents.
“We are encouraged that the Court has exercised judicial restraint over the past 100 days, as well as today when it has not prevented the law,” said John Sego, legislative director of Right to Life. “As long as this Texas savings law lasts, we will see unborn children and women still be protected in Texas.”