The Right To Life Ends At Birth

I’m probably not the right person to opine on this, being neither religious, Texan (redundant?) or a woman, but the facts on the ground are that as of midnight last night, abortion is effectively outlawed in Texas because our 6-3 Supreme Court did not issue an injunction to prevent enforcing Texas’ new law.

So what does this law do, you ask?

The bill allows anyone to sue anyone including:

• abortion providers who provides an abortion beyond six weeks
• anyone who funds paying for their health care beyond six weeks
• anyone who helps someone get an abortion beyond six weeks
• clergy or counselors who advise patients
• anyone who drives a patient to their appointment including family members, friends, and even rideshare drivers

So you nosey neighbor now can monetize her hobby and your sexxxxy time. The fundie next door who disapproves of your slutty behavior can make $10K Ameros and go to the front of the line at the Rapture.

Lucky for us, Our pals at Electoral-Vote understand what’s going on:

As we wrote yesterday, Texas adopted an anti-abortion bill designed to do an end run around the legal system. It makes those who obtain abortions after six weeks of gestation guilty of a criminal offense, and those who assist in any way liable to be sued for $10,000 by…anyone. The latter portion basically means there’s nobody to enjoin, and no clear way to preemptively block the law.

Well, actually, there is a clear way, namely going to a federal court, and asking them to issue an injunction against the law while the legal process plays out. Several federal judges declined to get involved, and yesterday the Supreme Court chose to take no action of any sort. And so, the new Texas law will go into effect today.

As all of these rights-restricting laws have done, this one will hit poor women the hardest; if you have the funds to fly out of state for that weekend shopping trip to Atlanta, nothing has really changed, but if you are living paycheck to paycheck, you will have that baby, even if you were raped by a family member.

Back to E-V:

At such point that the regular case (not the request for injunction) gets before the Supreme Court, which it surely will, it’s anyone’s guess as to how they will rule. Yes, they clearly want to gut protections for abortion as much as is possible. But, as we wrote yesterday, allowing Texas to perform this sort of legal sleight-of-hand could open Pandora’s Box. We used the example yesterday of a blue state allowing citizens to sue their fellow citizens who own guns for $10,000 if the gun owners cannot prove they are part of a “well-regulated militia.” We had a few readers write in and point out that the Supreme Court has already ruled on that question, and that being part of a well-regulated militia is not required. That is true, but the Supreme Court has also ruled that abortions are legal up to 24 weeks, and yet here we are. Further, it’s not too hard to come up with other liberal-state policy imperatives that SCOTUS has not ruled upon. Sue your neighbor for $10,000 for being a gross polluter and contributing to global warming? For not wearing a mask/not vaccinating without a good excuse? For not paying their employees a living wage? The possibilities are endless.

Elections have consequences, as they say. Those chickens have come home to roost.