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A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Texas to suspend the most restrictive abortion law in the United States, which has banned most abortions in the country’s second most populous state since September.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Putman is the first legal blow to Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, which has so far met with a wave of initial challenges. In the weeks since the sanctions took effect, Texas Abortion providers say the effect was “exactly what we feared.”
In a 113-page opinion, Putman said Texas should act on the law. Republican Lawmakers devised “an unprecedented and transparent legal scheme” to deny patients their constitutional rights. Abortion.
“Since SB8 came into force, women have been illegally prevented from exercising control over their lives, which are protected by the constitution,” Pittman wrote. Court This court will not allow a single day of this aggressive deprivation of this important right.
But despite the Prevention Act, abortion services in Texas may not resume immediately because doctors still fear they could be prosecuted without further legal action.
Texas officials are likely to seek a speedy reversal of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously allowed the sanctions to take effect.
The law, signed by Republican Greg Abbott in May, prohibits abortion once cardiac activity is detected, which usually lasts about six weeks, before some women even Find out if she is pregnant. To enforce the law, Texas hired private citizens to prosecute violators, and if they succeeded, they were entitled to at least ڈالر 10,000 in damages.
Was brought by the lawsuit Biden The administration, which has said the sanctions were imposed in violation of the US Constitution.
The Biden administration has argued that Texas has violated a woman’s constitutional right to abortion under GOP-engineered restrictions, which took effect on September 1.
A state cannot ban abortion in six weeks. Texas knew this, but it wanted a six-week ban anyway, so the state resorted to an unprecedented vigilance justice scheme designed to intimidate abortion providers and others into allowing women to marry. Can help exercise constitutional rights. Federal Court Friday
Abortion providers say their fears have become a reality as soon as the law is enacted. Planned Parenthood says the number of patients coming from Texas to its clinics in the state has dropped by about 80 percent in the two weeks since the law went into effect.
Some providers say Texas clinics are now in danger of closing, while neighboring states are struggling to keep up with the increase in patients who have to walk hundreds of miles. She says other women are being forced into pregnancy.
Other states, mostly in the south, have passed similar laws banning abortion in the early weeks of pregnancy, all of which have been blocked by judges. But the Texas version has so far left the courts behind because it stops prosecuting private citizens, not prosecutors, which critics say is a reward.
Defending the Texas Attorney General’s Office law, Will Thompson said it was not a precautionary measure. “It’s a scheme that uses the common, legal process of justice in Texas.”
Texas law is the only one that has set the biggest test of abortion rights in the United States in decades, and it is part of wider Republican pressure across the country to impose new abortion restrictions.
on Monday , US Supreme Court Introduced a new term, which will include arguments in Mississippi’s bid to end the historic 1973 rhetoric in December. Decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to abortion.
Last month, a court ruled that Texas law could not be upheld. But abortion providers took the 5-4 vote as an offensive sign of where the court is heading for abortion after consolidating its conservative majority with three appointments by former President Donald Trump.
Ahead of the Supreme Court’s new term, Planned Parenthood released a report on Friday stating that if Rovi. Wade has been overthrown, abortion has been banned in 26 states. According to Planned Parenthood, this year alone, about 600,600 abortion restrictions have been introduced in state homes across the country, with more than 90 becoming law.
Texas officials have argued in court that even if the law is temporarily suspended, providers may still face the risk of lawsuits for violations that could occur in time between a permanent decision. Is.
At least one Texas abortion provider has pleaded guilty and has been prosecuted - but not by abortion opponents. Former Illinois and Arkansas lawyers say they have filed a lawsuit against a San Antonio doctor who found a judge who will overturn the law.
(AP)
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