- The
Supreme Court refused to block a restrictive new law in Texas that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. - Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law, known as SB8, on May 19.
- The law bans abortions after six weeks, with no exception for incest or rape.
The Supreme Court has refused to block a restrictive new law in Texas that bans abortions after six weeks, with no exception for rape or incest.
In a 5-4 vote, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Neil M. Gorsuch, Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Clarence Thomas overruled the dissenting votes cast by Justices John G. Roberts, Jr., Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
The law, SB8, was signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on May 19. It bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and is a "heartbeat" abortion ban that prohibits the termination of pregnancy once a fetal heartbeat is detected. However, the six-week mark is before most people even know that they are pregnant.
The Supreme Court ruling was technical, hinging on whether the court currently had the right to step into a dispute that the majority felt was not ready for a full hearing on the merits. The justices said they had not ruled on the central question of whether the new Texas law was constitutional:
"In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants' lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas's law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts," they wrote.
This law is also particularly unique because it operates on a "sue-thy-neighbor" capacity, inviting private citizens to sue an abortion provider or anyone who they think helped a person get an abortion in the state. For every successful lawsuit, a private citizen could be rewarded with at least $10,000, in addition to legal expenses.
Abortion clinics in Texas appealed to the Supreme Court on August 30 to step in and block the law from going into force, saying it would prevent "at least 85% of Texas abortion patients" from getting the care they need, and force clinics to shut down.
The ruling is now being referred to as a "soft" overturn of Roe V. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that made abortion legal in the US. The Center for Reproductive Rights estimates that 34 states could cease to protect abortion rights if Roe is overturned.
State-level authorities continue to chip away at abortion rights despite a 2017 Pew Research study that found around 69% of Americans don't want Roe overturned.
The dissenting SCOTUS justices objected to the imposition of a "flagrantly unconstitutional" law in Texas
"Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, dissenting to the law being allowed to take effect.
Sotomayor added that "the Court's failure to act rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas."
Justice Elena Kagan wrote that her colleagues who refused to block the law had "acted without any guidance from the court of appeals."
"(The majority) has reviewed only the most cursory party submissions, and then only hastily. And it barely bothers to explain its conclusion - that a challenge to an obviously unconstitutional abortion regulation backed by a wholly unprecedented enforcement scheme is unlikely to prevail," she wrote.
Chief Justice Roberts, who joined the three liberal judges in dissent, wrote that he would have blocked the law while waiting for appeals to proceed.
"The statutory scheme before the court is not only unusual, but unprecedented," he wrote.
"The legislature has imposed a prohibition on abortions after roughly six weeks, and then essentially delegated enforcement of that prohibition to the populace at large. The desired consequence appears to be to insulate the state from responsibility for implementing and enforcing the regulatory regime," Roberts added.
The majority opinion of the five judges who refused to block the law was unsigned. It noted that the abortion providers who applied to the court did not make their case in the face of "complex and novel antecedent procedural questions."