SCOTUS Upheld Texas’ Abortion Law. Now, Women Are Terrified.

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Texas abortion clinics are turning women away — they have to, because it’s now the law. 

In the middle of the night, Texas lawmakers passed the most restrictive abortion laws to date since Roe v. Wade — and the Supreme Court did nothing to stop it. 

For all intents and purposes, Senate Bill 8 just straight bans abortions – it bans them at 6 weeks, but many women don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks.

Most feared this would eventually come to pass, but in a move that I can only describe as evil, citizens are encouraged and monetarily compensated for turning in women seeking abortions, doctors performing them, and anyone else seen as facilitating a woman’s pregnancy termination. 

It allows people to act as bounty hunters. Say an Uber driver took a woman to a clinic — they can turn the woman in for a $10,000 “reward.”

If I’m understanding this correctly, everyone involved BUT the man who got the woman pregnant can be sued or potentially face criminal charges. 

I don’t even have the words to describe this — just unintelligible screaming.

Roe v. Wade

“Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. 

“It struck down many U.S. federal and state abortion laws, and prompted an ongoing national debate in the United States about whether and to what extent abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, and what the role of religious and moral views in the political sphere should be.”

The decision restructured U.S. politics, separating Americans into pro-life and abortion rights movements. 

From Fear To Fruition 

Most Texas abortion clinics shuttered their doors at midnight, when the law went into effect. 

Roe v Wade is on the chopping block — this has been the ultimate goal, as it has long been in the crosshairs of the anti-abortion groups. 

“Texas has literally turned back the clock 50 years,” Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson says about the state’s six-week abortion ban.

“Most people don’t know that they are actually pregnant by six weeks. 85% of abortions happen in Texas after six weeks.”

“As Texas 6-week abortion ban goes into effect today, some context on the reproductive health landscape this is occurring in. For years, GOP leaders have dismantled the family planning safety net. Much of TX is already without access to abortion, contraception, maternity care,” tweeted Texas Observer reporter Sophie Novack. 

“In recent years, Texas lawmakers have slashed family planning funds, shuttered dozens of clinics, kicked Planned Parenthood out of state women’s health programs, declined to expand health coverage — while funneling millions of dollars to anti-abortion orgs.”

Novack added, “As rural hospitals in TX struggle to stay open, maternity wards are often first to be cut.

“Of the state’s 158 remaining rural hospitals, only 66 still delivered babies as of last year. More than half of the 254 counties have no OB-GYN.”

Already, Texas abortion restrictions have made it difficult to find providers who live in the state. Clinics have long relied on traveling doctors who fly in from across the county.

Even if SCOTUS blocked TX 6-week abortion ban, (spoiler alert: they did not) impact will likely last. From 2017, legislation often moves faster than courts. 

By the time SCOTUS struck HB 2 in 2016, half of Texas’s abortion clinics had closed. Few have reopened.

In a state that already has some of the country’s most limited abortion access, this is a death blow to women’s reproductive rights. 

Supreme Court 

“The Supreme Court declined to block a Texas law banning abortions after a fetal cardiac activity can be detected, or as early as six weeks into pregnancy, and allowing anyone in the U.S. to sue abortion providers or others who help women get the procedure after that time frame,” according to MSNBC. 

In a 5-4 ruling, Supreme Court declines to block Texas’ restrictive abortion law; Chief Justice Roberts joins the court’s liberal justices.

“The Court’s decision allowing the Texas law to go into effect claims it is not ruling on the merits, because it’s unclear whether any lawsuits will be brought to prevent abortion, etc. This is just weird,” tweeted Supreme Court Lawyer and law professor Neal Katyal. 

“Everyone knows they will be brought, that’s why the clinics have stopped providing abortions. Justice Sotomayor calls it exactly right when she says it is the Ct burying its head in the sand. Chief Justice Roberts tellingly sides against Texas,” he added.  

“And if this is the rationale, that Texas by enabling only private lawsuits means that cts are powerless because it’s unclear whether the law will ever be enforced by private parties, that’s dangerous for anyone who cares about constl rights. 

“Take guns. States like NY can now create “private lawsuits” against people who carry firearms for any reason and say ‘oh it’s not clear it’ll ever be enforced, so cts you are powerless to do anything.’ The list of possible ways this silliness can be used to deny people their constl rights is endless. This is a low, low moment,” Katyal said, ending the thread.

Dissent

Even Chief Justice Roberts dissented with the three Supreme Court liberals (Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan), saying the Texas abortion law uniquely makes the whole populace the enforcer.

But four dissents make no difference — the Texas ban on abortions after six weeks stands. 

Stunning, But Not Shocking 

Millions knew this was where abortion laws were headed and have been sending up a distress signal since Trump was elected in 2016. 

Margaret Atwood, whether knowingly or not, sounded the alarm when she wrote ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ in 1985. 

The novel is set in New England, “in a strongly patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state, known as Republic of Gilead, that has overthrown the United States government. 

“The central character and narrator is a woman named Offred, one of the group known as ‘handmaids,’  who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the ‘commanders’ -– the ruling class of men.”

Sounds insane, right? Could never happen!

Except it could, and it is happening.  

It wasn’t overnight, like in the fictional place Gilead — but the incremental chipping away of women’s reproductive rights has been happening and the cracks are turning into chasms. 

Because if Texas and the Supreme Court approved a law for abortion vigilantiasm, which is what Senate Bill 8 allows for, we aren’t very far from Gilead. 

How are you responding to Texas’ abortion law? Share with us in the comments.

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