Re: TX Anti-Abortion Law
Posted: Sun Dec 12, 2021 9:31 am
The application requested it go back to the District Court. Is it common for SCOTUS to send it to a different level than requested?UPON CONSIDERATION of the application of counsel for the
applicants,
IT IS ORDERED that the application to issue the judgment forthwith
is granted, and the judgment is issued to the United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit.
/s/ Neil M. Gorsuch
Associate Justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States
It is common for SCOTUS to return the case to the court that sent the case to it. It would be unusual for a high court to return it directly to the originating court.
"Weeks."The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday asked the Texas Supreme Court to resolve a central question in an ongoing legal challenge to the state's six-week ban on abortion, a highly unusual move that is expected to delay a resolution in the case.
In a 2-1 vote, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit sided with attorneys for the state and agreed to ask the Texas Supreme Court whether the medical licensing officials named in the lawsuit can be sued by the abortion providers behind the challenge.
* * *
Should the Texas Supreme Court agree to take up the case and answer the question posed by attorneys for the state, the resulting legal detour could take weeks, legal experts said.
Nor does Florida -- how well does that work out for us here?
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Abortions in Texas fell by 60% in the first month under the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S. in decades, according to new figures that for the first time reveal a full accounting of the immediate impact.
The nearly 2,200 abortions reported by Texas providers in September came after a new law took effect that bans the procedure once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy and without exceptions in cases of rape or incest. The figures were released this month by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
In August, there had been more than 5,400 abortions statewide. State health officials said more data will be released on a monthly basis.
The numbers offer a fuller picture of the sharp drop in patients that Texas doctors have described in their clinics over the past five months, during which time courts have repeatedly allowed the restrictions to stay in place. It has left some Texas patients traveling hundreds of miles to clinics in neighboring states or farther, causing a backlog of appointments in those places.
Texas Supreme Court Shuts Down Final Challenge to Abortion Law
The ruling says state officials have no authority to enforce the law, which empowers private citizens: “We cannot rewrite the statute.”
By Kate Zernike and Adam Liptak
March 11, 2022, 8:02 p.m. ET
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday effectively shut down a federal challenge to the state’s novel and controversial ban on abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, closing off what abortion rights advocates said was their last, narrow path to blocking the new law.
The decision was the latest in a line of blows to the constitutional right to abortion that has prevailed for five decades.
The Texas law, which several states are attempting to copy, puts enforcement in the hands of civilians. It offers the prospect of $10,000 rewards for successful lawsuits against anyone — from an Uber driver to a doctor — who “aids or abets” a woman who gets an abortion once fetal cardiac activity can be detected.
It is the most restrictive abortion law in the nation, and flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which prohibits states from banning the procedure before a fetus is viable outside the womb, which is currently about 23 weeks of pregnancy.
By empowering everyday people and expressly banning enforcement by state officials, the law, known as S.B. 8, was designed to escape judicial review in federal court. Advocates of abortion rights had asked the Supreme Court to block it even before it took effect last September. The justices repeatedly declined, and said that because state officials were not responsible for enforcing the law it could not be challenged in federal court based on the constitutional protections established by Roe.
But the Supreme Court left open the smallest of windows, saying in December that opponents of the law could file suit against Texas medical licensing officials, who might discipline abortion providers who violate the law.
On Friday, the justices of the Texas Supreme Court, all Republicans, said that those officials did not, in fact, have any power to enforce the law, “either directly or indirectly,” and so could not be sued.
The justices said the law had effectively tied their hands. They agreed that the state’s licensing officials had the authority to discipline providers for violating other abortion restrictions. “But we conclude that the Heartbeat Act expressly provides otherwise,” the court said, using the title of S.B. 8.
“The act’s emphatic, unambiguous and repeated provisions” declare that a private civil action is the “exclusive” method for enforcing the law, the justices wrote. They added, “These provisions deprive the state-agency executives of any authority they might otherwise have to enforce the requirements through a disciplinary action.”
“We cannot rewrite the statute,” the justices wrote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/us/t ... n-law.html
Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen wrote: NEW: Texas state representative @BriscoeCain threatened Citigroup that he'd introduce a bill to prevent the bank from underwriting municipal bonds in the state unless it rescinded its policy covering travel expenses for employees who leave Texas to seek an abortion.
"Cain also vowed to propose legislation that, if passed, would authorize district attorneys from anywhere in the state to prosecute a company that violated the abortion law if the local district attorney did not take action."
Video explainer:PUSSY RIOT x IKIYA X UNICORN PROTESTS THE ATTACK ON REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS WITH “MATRIARCHY NOW!” BANNER AT TEXAS STATE CAPITOL
MOMENT OF ACTION BEING MINTED AS NFT AND AUCTIONED VIA PARTY BID, ALL FUNDS TO REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
unicorndao.com/matriarchy-now/
Across the U.S., more than 2,500 crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) provide free services and counseling for women struggling with unplanned pregnancies. They outnumber abortion clinics 3 to 1 nationwide, and as some states shutter clinics after Roe’s reversal, that ratio will grow.
But when two NBC News producers visited state-funded CPCs in Texas to ask for counseling, counselors told them that abortions caused mental illness and implied abortions could also cause cancer and infertility.
The nation’s largest national obstetricians’ group, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says that’s medical misinformation.
The centers, which are often faith-based, frequently get funding from religious groups and individual donors, but many also depend partly on taxpayer dollars. CPCs have long been accused of providing what experts have called “misleading or false” information to discourage women from getting abortions, as NBC News witnessed firsthand after sending two producers to CPCs in Texas to request pregnancy counseling.