Texas women seeking abortions will continue to face harsh, unconstitutional restrictions for months longer after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit created a new delay by sending a challenge to the state’s abortion bounty hunter law to the state Supreme Court. Challenges to the law, which bans abortions past six weeks—before many women know they are pregnant—have at this point gone from the federal district court to the 5th Circuit to the Supreme Court back to the 5th Circuit, and will now go to the state court.
The Supreme Court ruled in December that abortion providers could sue licensing officials with enforcement authority over medical professionals, but the 5th Circuit has now given Texas Republicans what they asked for, sending the question of whether those licensing officials really have the enforcement power on which the Supreme Court’s decision rested to the state court. The Texas law is designed to evade the courts by allowing anyone to sue an abortion provider or anyone else who “aids or abets” an abortion past six weeks. While it’s a blatant ploy, it’s working with the Republican judges who wanted it to work to begin with.
“This further, second-guessing redundancy, without time limit, deepens my concern that justice delayed is justice denied, here impeding relief ordered by the Supreme Court,” wrote Judge Stephen Higginson, the dissenting judge on the 5th Circuit’s three-judge panel. That is, of course, the point. One of the judges on the majority in the panel even suggested during oral arguments, “Maybe we ought to just sit on this until the end of June”—when the U.S. Supreme Court might overturn Roe v. Wade.
The Texas Supreme Court could take weeks or months to decide the issue and potentially send the case back to the federal district court, where Judge Robert Pitman previously temporarily blocked the law from being enforced. Meanwhile, the law is forcing women to leave the state to obtain the medical care they’re entitled to.
”People in Texas have been stripped of their constitutional right to abortion for more than four months now—and pregnant Texans are needlessly suffering with no end in sight,” an attorney with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America said in response to the decision. “We call on the U.S. Supreme Court to enforce its order and send this case back to the district court where it belongs.” Though the court did give abortion providers a narrow path forward in court, its right-wing majority is definitely happy to allow further delay.
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The Supreme Court ruled in December that abortion providers could sue licensing officials with enforcement authority over medical professionals, but the 5th Circuit has now given Texas Republicans what they asked for, sending the question of whether those licensing officials really have the enforcement power on which the Supreme Court’s decision rested to the state court. The Texas law is designed to evade the courts by allowing anyone to sue an abortion provider or anyone else who “aids or abets” an abortion past six weeks. While it’s a blatant ploy, it’s working with the Republican judges who wanted it to work to begin with.
“This further, second-guessing redundancy, without time limit, deepens my concern that justice delayed is justice denied, here impeding relief ordered by the Supreme Court,” wrote Judge Stephen Higginson, the dissenting judge on the 5th Circuit’s three-judge panel. That is, of course, the point. One of the judges on the majority in the panel even suggested during oral arguments, “Maybe we ought to just sit on this until the end of June”—when the U.S. Supreme Court might overturn Roe v. Wade.
The Texas Supreme Court could take weeks or months to decide the issue and potentially send the case back to the federal district court, where Judge Robert Pitman previously temporarily blocked the law from being enforced. Meanwhile, the law is forcing women to leave the state to obtain the medical care they’re entitled to.
”People in Texas have been stripped of their constitutional right to abortion for more than four months now—and pregnant Texans are needlessly suffering with no end in sight,” an attorney with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America said in response to the decision. “We call on the U.S. Supreme Court to enforce its order and send this case back to the district court where it belongs.” Though the court did give abortion providers a narrow path forward in court, its right-wing majority is definitely happy to allow further delay.
Contribute now to support abortion funds providing financial assistance to people seeking abortion care.