A federal appeals court in the United States reinstated the restrictive anti-abortion law implemented in Texas on Friday night, just two days after a judge temporarily blocked it.
A Federal Court of Appeals allowed this great conservative state to reestablish a ultra-restrictive law that prohibits abortion once the heartbeat of the embryo is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy, when most women still do not know they are pregnant. The law does not provide an exception in cases of rape or incest.
The family planning organization Planned Parenthood immediately announced that it would once again suspend abortions of more than six weeks and denounced a court ruling that “once again ignores half a century of precedents protecting the constitutional right to abortion.”
The twists and turns of justice
The law called “Texas Heartbeat Act”, which took effect on September 1, had been temporarily blocked on Wednesday by a federal judge in Texas after a complaint from the Joe Biden government.
After the blockade, abortions of pregnancies of more than six weeks were resumed in some clinics in the state, the second most populous in the country with 29 million inhabitants.
But Texas Attorney General Republican Ken Paxton appealed to a federal court, known to be one of the most conservative in the country, which ruled in his favor and again banned voluntary terminations of pregnancy.
Whatever the final decision of the appeals court, the case is most likely to end again before the Supreme Court, which weeks ago refused to study the law although it admitted that the litigants had raised serious doubts about its constitutionality.
The magistrate who blocked the law on Wednesday, Robert Pitman, said that Texas “has created an aggressive and unprecedented mechanism to deprive its citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right.”
For Pitman, the law “has illegally prevented women from exercising control over their lives” and added that his court “will not allow this offensive deprivation to continue for another day.”
What the law says
Texas law allows individuals to file civil lawsuits against anyone who assists a pregnant woman with an abortion if they believe you violate the ban and offer rewards of up to $ 10,000 to each plaintiff if you win the lawsuit.
That system has so far allowed Texas authorities to evade responsibility for law enforcement, because the burden of implementation rests on those private citizens and not on the conservative leaders who pushed for the veto.
It was this legal vacuum that allowed the law to enter into force a month ago with the approval of the Supreme Court, even though it expressly contradicts the 1973 court decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States, known as “Roe versus Wade.”
The Texas veto – which prohibits abortion from six weeks of gestation, when many women still do not know they are pregnant – is the most restrictive of the 90 that have come into effect this year in territories across the country, driven by Conservative leaders in state congresses.
In all likelihood, the federal government will appeal against the decision of the Court of Appeals. You have until Tuesday afternoon to do so. This law is likely to be swiftly elevated for review by the Supreme Court.
United States law
In its emblematic sentence of 1973 Roe v. Wade, the highest court guaranteed the woman’s right to abortion. Then he specified that it is applied while the fetus is not viable, that is, around 22 weeks of gestation.
In recent years, a dozen other conservative states passed laws comparable to Texas, but were struck down in court for violating this jurisprudence.
“The Supreme Court must intervene and stop this madness,” reacted in a statement Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which defends the right to abortion.
But in September, for the first time in nearly half a century, the Supreme Court refused to block the entry into force of Texas law, which similarly contravenes Roe v. Wade.
The high court justified its inaction with “new procedural questions”, on the grounds that Texas law consists of a single device: it entrusts “exclusively” citizens to enforce the measure by inciting them to file a complaint against organizations or individuals. that help women to abort illegally.
The position of the Supreme Court in this case was seen as a “turn to the right” of this high jurisdiction, six of whose nine justices are conservatives, including three appointed by Donald Trump.
The Supreme Court is also due to examine a Mississippi law prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy this fall, and may seize the opportunity to establish its new position.
If the Court annulled the Roe v. Wade, all states would be free to prohibit or allow abortion.
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