On Thursday, a state court in Texas threw out a lawsuit brought against abortion provider Dr. Alan Braid. The San Antonio doctor had been sued under Texas’ near-total abortion ban law, Senate Bill 8. Dr. Braid admitted to defying the law just days after it took effect. Dr. Braid was not clandestine about his actions, penning an opinion piece that was promptly published in The Washington Post, titled “Why I violated Texas’s extreme abortion ban.”
Braid was sued by two separate parties. According to the Texas Tribune, the court’s ruling did away with the first of these two cases. While the ruling sets an important precedent, it does not overturn the outrageous law itself. What the ruling does do, according to Center for Reproductive Rights president Nancy Northup (whose group is representing Braid in court), is reject “the notion that Texas can allow a person with no connection to an abortion to sue.”
RELATED STORY: Doctor defies restrictive Texas abortion law, says in op-ed he 'had a duty of care'
Which specific lawsuit was dismissed has not yet been reported, but as the Texas Tribune reported back in September 2021, when the lawsuits were first filed, the two parties suing Dr. Braid sounded like real patriots. Both parties were “disbarred attorneys”: Illinois resident Felipe N. Gomez and Arkansan Oscar Stilley.
The abortion ban was implemented with a level of cynicism and cowardice only available to the more conservative policy thinkers in Texas. The law, as written, “prohibited officials from enforcing the law and has the power to anyone including those outside of the state to sue those who violate it.” The hope was to make Texans and not the law itself accountable for a wildly unpopular attack on more than half of its citizens’ freedoms.
Dr. Braid has had to close his clinic in San Antonio, Texas, that serviced the health care needs of many as a result of the new Texas laws that passed over the last two years. “It is heartbreaking that Texans still can’t get essential health care in their home state and that providers are left afraid to do their jobs. Though we were forced to close our Texas clinic, I will continue serving patients across the region with the care they deserve at new clinics in Illinois and New Mexico.”
The six-week ban on abortions and the attached vigilante law giving any yokel the right to sue and collect a bounty on anyone breaking this Salem-Witch-Trial-era-style law was one of the many big swings towards theocracy made by Republicans before they were trounced in the midterms.
As Dr. Baird wrote:
“I have daughters, granddaughters and nieces. I believe abortion is an essential part of health care. I have spent the past 50 years treating and helping patients. I can’t just sit back and watch us return to 1972.”
Hear, hear.
RELATED STORIES:
Texas abortion vigilante law forces women to leave the state for medical care, state AG confirms
Texas doesn't want to enforce its new abortion law, it wants your neighbors to do that
Braid was sued by two separate parties. According to the Texas Tribune, the court’s ruling did away with the first of these two cases. While the ruling sets an important precedent, it does not overturn the outrageous law itself. What the ruling does do, according to Center for Reproductive Rights president Nancy Northup (whose group is representing Braid in court), is reject “the notion that Texas can allow a person with no connection to an abortion to sue.”
RELATED STORY: Doctor defies restrictive Texas abortion law, says in op-ed he 'had a duty of care'
Which specific lawsuit was dismissed has not yet been reported, but as the Texas Tribune reported back in September 2021, when the lawsuits were first filed, the two parties suing Dr. Braid sounded like real patriots. Both parties were “disbarred attorneys”: Illinois resident Felipe N. Gomez and Arkansan Oscar Stilley.
The abortion ban was implemented with a level of cynicism and cowardice only available to the more conservative policy thinkers in Texas. The law, as written, “prohibited officials from enforcing the law and has the power to anyone including those outside of the state to sue those who violate it.” The hope was to make Texans and not the law itself accountable for a wildly unpopular attack on more than half of its citizens’ freedoms.
Dr. Braid has had to close his clinic in San Antonio, Texas, that serviced the health care needs of many as a result of the new Texas laws that passed over the last two years. “It is heartbreaking that Texans still can’t get essential health care in their home state and that providers are left afraid to do their jobs. Though we were forced to close our Texas clinic, I will continue serving patients across the region with the care they deserve at new clinics in Illinois and New Mexico.”
The six-week ban on abortions and the attached vigilante law giving any yokel the right to sue and collect a bounty on anyone breaking this Salem-Witch-Trial-era-style law was one of the many big swings towards theocracy made by Republicans before they were trounced in the midterms.
As Dr. Baird wrote:
“I have daughters, granddaughters and nieces. I believe abortion is an essential part of health care. I have spent the past 50 years treating and helping patients. I can’t just sit back and watch us return to 1972.”
Hear, hear.
RELATED STORIES:
Texas abortion vigilante law forces women to leave the state for medical care, state AG confirms
Texas doesn't want to enforce its new abortion law, it wants your neighbors to do that