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The U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 1
https://www.reuters.com/business/
healthcare-pharmaceuticals/texas-six-week-abortion-ban-takes-effect-2021-09-01
allowed the Republican-backed law to take effect even as litigation
over its legality continues in lower courts. The U.S. Justice
Department eight days later sued in federal court
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/
us-justice-dept-announce-civil-rights-
case-after-texas-abortion-ban-takes-
effect-2021-09-09 to try to invalidate it.
During a hearing in the Texas capital of Austin, Justice Department
lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman to block the law
temporarily, saying the state's Republican legislature and governor
enacted it in an open defiance of the Constitution.
"There is no doubt under binding constitutional precedents that a
state may not ban abortions at six weeks," said Brian Netter, the
lead Justice Department attorney on the case.
"Texas knew this but, it wanted a 6-week ban anyway. So this state
resorted to an unprecedented scheme of vigilante justice."
The Texas law bans abortions starting at six weeks of pregnancy, a
point when many women may not realize they are pregnant. About 85%
to 90% of abortions are performed after six weeks. Texas makes no
exception for cases of rape and incest.
It also lets ordinary citizens enforce the ban, rewarding them at
least $10,000 if they successfully sue anyone who helped provide an
abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected.
Will Thompson, an attorney in the Texas Attorney General's Office,
countered the Justice Department's arguments, saying there were
plenty of opportunities for people in Texas to challenge the law on
their own, and claiming the Department's arguments were filled with
"hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric."
"This is not some kind of vigilante scheme, as opposing counsel
suggests," said Thompson. "This is a scheme that uses lawful process
of justice in Texas."
Pitman, who was appointed by Democratic former President Barack
Obama in 2014, at one point seemed skeptical of Thompson's
arguments, telling him Texas seems to have "gone to great lengths"
to make its abortion ban difficult to challenge in court.
The judge said: "My obvious question to you is: If the state is so
confident in the constitutionality of the limitations on woman's
access to abortion, then why did it go to such great lengths to
create this private cause of action rather than do it directly?"
Thompson responded that laws providing for enforcement are not as
unusual as the Justice Department has claimed.
In the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide,
the Supreme Court recognized a woman's constitutional right to
terminate a pregnancy.
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 The high court in December is
due to hear arguments over the legality of a
Mississippi abortion law in a case in which
officials from that state are asking the
justices to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
The Mississippi and Texas laws are among a
series of Republican-backed measures passed by
various states restricting abortion.
Since the Texas law went into effect, the four
Whole Woman's Health abortion clinics across the
state have reported that
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/texas-abortion-clinics-struggle-survive-under-restrictive-law-2021-09-30
patient visits have plummeted and some staff
have quit.
In addition to infringing on women's
constitutional rights to seek an abortion, the
Justice Department argued that the law also
impedes the federal government's own ability to
offer abortion-related services.
In an effort to counter those claims, attorneys
for the state on Friday played clips from
depositions of various senior U.S. government
officials.
In one clip, lawyers interrogated Alix McLearen,
a senior official at the Bureau of Prisons who,
in response to questions, testified that there
were currently no pregnant inmates being held at
certain detention facilities in Texas.
In another clip, Laurie Bodenheimer of the
Office of Personnel Management was asked whether
any insurance carriers had raised concerns about
the impact or effect of the Texas law.
"To my knowledge no carrier has raised concerns
about SB8," she said.
The Justice Department's Netter told the judge
that Texas had cherry-picked some of the sound
bites in the videos and edited out the portions
in which Department attorneys had objected
during the depositions.
Netter noted, for instance, that Texas
conveniently omitted a portion of McLearen's
testimony in which she said the prisons bureau
has pregnant inmates incarcerated currently at
FMC Carswell, which he noted is "the only secure
medical facility for women" in the entire
country.
"It is irreparable injury for there to be a
violation of the Supremacy Clause," Netter said,
referring to the Constitutional principle that
establishes that federal laws have supremacy
over state laws.
More than 600 marches are planned around the
United States on Saturday to protest the Texas
law.
In Washington, D.C., protesters will march to
the U.S. Supreme Court to decry the court's 5-4
decision in September that denied a request from
abortion and women's health providers to enjoin
enforcement of the ban.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Sarah N. Lynch in
Washington; Editing by Will Dunham, Alistair
Bell and Dan Grebler)
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