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 The providers asked the justices to hear their case before lower
courts have finished ruling on the dispute because of the "great
harm the ban is causing." The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3
conservative majority, this month refused to block the law, which
bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.
The Texas law is unusual in that it gives private citizens the power
to enforce it by enabling them to sue anyone who assists a woman in
getting an abortion past the six-week cutoff. That feature has
helped shield the law from being immediately blocked as it made it
more difficult to directly sue the government.
In their petition to the Supreme Court, the abortion providers
including Whole Woman's Health and other advocacy groups said that
the justices should decide if the state can "insulate" its law from
federal court review by delegating its enforcement to the general
public.
The Supreme Court rarely agrees to hear a case before lower courts
have had a chance to weigh in with their own rulings. But in the
court's 5-4 decision on Sept. 1 to let the law stand for now, the
dissenting justices, including conservative Chief Justice John
Roberts, expressed skepticism about how the law is enforced.
Roberts said he would have blocked the law's enforcement at that
point "so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid
responsibility for its laws in such a manner."
The providers said that the ban has eliminated the vast majority of
abortions in the state given the threat of "ruinous liability,"
causing Texans to have to travel hundreds of miles (km) to other
states, causing backlogs there.
"Texans are in crisis," they said in a legal filing.
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 Democratic President Joe
Biden's administration on Sept 9 sued Texas,
seeking to block enforcement of the
Republican-backed law, as his fellow Democrats
fear the right to abortion established in 1973
may be at risk. The Texas law is
the latest Republican-backed measure passed at the state level
restricting abortion.
The measure prohibits abortion at a point when many women do not
even realize they are pregnant. Under the law, individual citizens
can be awarded a minimum of $10,000 for bringing successful lawsuits
against those who perform or help others obtain an abortion that
violates the ban.
The providers said that they have been forced to comply with the law
because defending against these lawsuits, even if they prevail,
would amount to "costly, and potentially bankrupting, harassment."
The Supreme Court already is set to consider a major abortion case
on Dec. 1 in a dispute centering on Mississippi's 15-week abortion
ban in which that state has asked the justices to overturn the 1973
Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide and ended an
era when some states had banned the procedure. A ruling is due by
the end of June 2022.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editig by Will Dunham)
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