In an over-night vote, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) voted 5 to 4 to leave Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB8) in place, quashing an attempt by Texas abortion providers to stop the controversial law that prohibits abortions beyond six weeks.
Under this law, abortion is banned once a fetal heartbeat is detected, making the rule a near-total ban, given that 85%-90% of abortions are obtained after the six weeks of pregnancy. While the law makes an exception for “medical emergencies,” there are no exceptions for cases of rape or incest—and the law empowers private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who aids or abets an abortion past six weeks, offering at least $10,000 to citizens who win such lawsuits. This last detail has alarmed abortion providers and troubled legal experts, who noted that the precedent for citizen enforcement could have broad repercussions if it gains further use across the U.S.
President Joe Biden issued a statement attacking the SCOTUS decision, calling the evening vote “an unprecedented assault on a woman’s constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for almost fifty years. By allowing a law to go into effect that empowers private citizens in Texas to sue health care providers, family members supporting a woman exercising her right to choose after six weeks, or even a friend who drives her to a hospital or clinic, it unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts… Rather than use its supreme authority to ensure justice could be fairly sought, the highest Court of our land will allow millions of women in Texas in need of critical reproductive care to suffer while courts sift through procedural complexities. The dissents by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan all demonstrate the error of the Court’s action here powerfully.”
In his dissent, SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “The statutory scheme before the Court is not only unusual, but unprecedented. 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.”
Justice Sotomayor, who also dissented, came out even harder against the ruling: “The Court’s order is stunning. 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. Last night, the Court silently acquiesced in a State’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents.”
She went on to call the move a “breathtaking act of defiance—of the Constitution, of this Court’s precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas.”
A host of public health organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and the American College of Physicians (ACP), issued statements excoriating the Texas law:
- AMA president Gerald E. Harmon, MD, called the ban a “significant overreach,” noting that it “not only bans virtually all abortions in the state, but it interferes in the patient-physician relationship and places bounties on physicians and health care workers simply for delivering care. Opening the door to third-party litigation against physicians severely compromises patient access to safe clinical care.”
- Maureen G. Phipps, MD, MPH, FACOG, ACOG’s chief executive officer, and Eugene Toy, MD, FACOG, chair of ACOG District XI (Texas), called Texas SB8 “a clear attack on the practice of medicine in our country and on decades of established legal precedent,” adding that “patients and those they trust, including the clinicians who are dedicated to ensuring they can access respectful care, deserve better than this harmful law.”
- George M. Abraham, MD, FACP, FIDSA, president of the ACP, wrote that this law “creates a precedent for other states to enact and seek to implement similarly harmful laws, as several have already done. The law immediately denies women in Texas their established constitutional right to abortion services and their autonomy to make decisions about their personal health, including reproductive health. It egregiously interferes with the patient-physician relationship, by creating an unacceptable and unprecedented ability for private citizens to take legal action against physicians who fulfill their obligations to their patients by counseling them on the full range of health care services available to them or providing necessary care to them.”
In his statement, President Biden announced that he is launching a “whole-of-government effort” to respond to the SCOTUS decision, mobilizing the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice “to see what steps the Federal Government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe, and what legal tools we have to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas’ bizarre scheme of outsourced enforcement to private parties.”
John McKenna, Associate Editor, BreakingMED™
Cat ID: 191
Topic ID: 83,191,730,191,41,192,150,151,418,925
