us-regions clinics on Saturday canceled appointments they had booked during a 48-hour reprieve from the most judiciary in the U.S., which was back in effect as weary providers again turn their sights to the judiciary
joe-biden” target=”_blank”>The Biden administration< had no immediate comment Saturday.
For now at least, the law is in the hands of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which allowed the restrictions to resume pending further arguments. In the meantime, Texas abortion providers and patients are right back to where they’ve been for most of the last six weeks.
David Trujillo holds a sign as a school bus travels by on the street in front of a building housing an abortion provider in Dallas, Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. A federal judge ordered Texas to suspend a new law that has banned most abortions in the state since September. An order Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman suspended the strict abortion law known as Senate Bill 8. A federal appeals court reinstated the law late Friday.
(AP Photo/LM Otero)
TEXAS ‘FETAL HEARTBEAT’ ABORTION LAW REINSTATED BY APPEALS COURT RULING
Out-of-state clinics already inundated with Texas patients seeking abortions were again the closest option for many women. Providers say others are being forced to carry pregnancies to term or waiting in hopes that courts will strike down the law that took effect on Sept. 1.
There are also new questions — including whether anti-abortion advocates will try punishing Texas physicians who performed abortions during the brief window the law was paused from late Wednesday to late Friday. Texas leaves enforcement solely in the hands of private citizens who can collect $10,000 or more in damages if they successfully sue abortion providers who flout the restrictions.
Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, created a tip line to receive reports of violators. About a dozen calls came in after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman suspended the law, said John Seago, the group’s legislative director.
Although some Texas clinics said they had briefly resumed abortions on patients who were beyond six weeks, Seago said his group had no lawsuits in the works. He said the clinics’ public statements did not “match up with what we saw on the ground,” which he says includes a network of observers and crisis pregnancy centers.
“I don’t have any credible evidence at the moment of litigation that we would bring forward,” Seago said Saturday.
Texas had roughly two dozen abortion clinics before the law took effect. At least six clinics resumed performing abortions after six weeks of pregnancy during the reprieve, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
David Trujillo holds a sign as a bus travels by on the street in front of a building housing an abortion provider in Dallas, Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. A federal judge ordered Texas to suspend a new law that has banned most abortions in the state since September. A federal appeals court reinstated the law late Friday.
(AP Photo/LM Otero)
ABBY JOHNSON RESPONDS TO BILLIE EILISH ON ABORTION: AN UBORN BABY IS ‘NOT. YOUR. BODY.’
At Whole Woman’s Health, which has four abortion clinics in Texas, president and CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller said she did not have the number of abortions her locations performed for patients beyond six weeks but put it at “quite a few.” She said her clinics were again complying with the law and acknowledged the risks her physicians and staff had taken.
“Of course we are all worried,” she said. “But we also feel a deep commitment to providing abortion care when it is legal to do, so we did.”
Pitman, the federal judge who halted the Texas law Wednesday in a blistering 113-page opinion, was appointed by barack-obama” target=”_blank”>President Barack Obama.<
A 1992 decision by the Supreme Court prevented states from banning abortion before viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, around 24 weeks of pregnancy. But Texas’ version has outmaneuvered courts due to its novel enforcement mechanism that leaves enforcement to private citizens and not prosecutors, which critics say amounts to a bounty.
The Biden administration could bring the case back to the Supreme Court and ask it to quickly restore Pitman’s order, although it is unclear whether it will do so.
“I’m not very optimistic about what could happen at the Supreme Court,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, referring to the Justice Department’s chances.
“But there’s not much downside either, right?” he said. “The question is, what’s changed since the last time they saw it? There is this full opinion, this full hearing before the judge and the record. So that may be enough.”
