Texas bans almost all abortions, Supreme Court refuses to intervene

A law banning the vast majority of abortions came into force in Texas on Wednesday, September 1, a text that the United States Supreme Court refused to suspend overnight Wednesday to Thursday, effectively waiving a right it herself recognized almost 50 years ago, with Roe v. Wade in 1973. Seized urgently Monday by defenders of the right to abortion, the high court, which former President Donald Trump has firmly anchored in conservatism, did not rule on the constitutionality of the law entered into force 24 hours earlier, but invokes “complex and new procedural issues” to leave it in place while the legal battle continues.

Even before the Supreme Court ruling, President Joe Biden quickly denounced a law “radical”, to the provisions “shameful”, and promised to “protect” the right of women to have an abortion. Vice President Kamala Harris has also spoken to ensure that “The Biden-Harris administration will always fight to defend a woman’s right to make decisions about her body and determine her future”.

The text that entered into force, signed in May by Republican Governor Greg Abbott, prohibits terminating any pregnancy once the embryo’s heartbeat is detected, i.e. after about six weeks of pregnancy, when most women do not even know they are pregnant at the time. The law does not provide an exception in cases of rape or incest, but only if the health of the pregnant woman is in danger. However, more than 85% of abortions performed so far in Texas take place after six weeks of pregnancy, according to family planning organizations in the state which on Wednesday reported their deep distress.

“I woke up sad, worried, stunned”Amy Hagstrom Miller, director of the Whole Woman’s Health organization, which operates four clinics in Texas, told a briefing. One of them, in Fort Worth, performed abortions until 11:56 p.m. Tuesday night, but had to stop as there were still patients in the waiting room. “The doctors were crying and asking me: what can we do for them?”, said Ms. Miller.

“The patients are scared, confused, angry”added Vanessa Rodriguez who oversees Planned Parenthood call centers in Texas. “We’re doing our best to try to help them … we’re looking for dates in Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico …”.

Conversely, opponents of abortion were jubilant. “This is a historic moment in the fight to protect women and children”, commented Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the SBA List group, as the organization LifeNews tweeted a photomontage of a fetus with a thumbs-up, as a sign of satisfaction.

Before Texas, twelve states passed legislation to ban abortions as soon as the embryo’s heartbeat is noticeable. These laws have all been invalidated in court, because they violate the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court which recognized a right to abortion as long as the fetus is not viable, that is to say around 22 weeks of pregnancy.

But Texas has worded its law differently: it is not up to the authorities to enforce the measure, but “exclusively” to citizens, encouraged to bring a civil complaint against organizations or people who help women to have abortions. The text provides that these citizens receive at least 10,000 dollars in “compensation” in case of conviction. Critics of the text see it as a “premium” to the denunciation, but its defenders have already set up forms on the internet to file “anonymous information”.

For procedural reasons, this device makes it more difficult for the federal courts to intervene, which have so far refused to take recourse against the law. The defenders of the right to abortion therefore had to go directly to the Supreme Court. But the high court offered a major victory to opponents of abortion by refusing to suspend the law, while stressing that other appeals could be filed against the text, in particular before the courts of the state.