“Sue your neighbor, please,” say Texas Republicans as their new abortion law takes hold.
The Texas Tribune outlines the basics of the new law:
The law prohibits abortions whenever an ultrasound can detect what lawmakers defined as a fetal “heartbeat,” though medical and legal experts say this term is misleading because embryos don’t possess a heart at that developmental stage.
Providers and abortion rights advocacy groups say this would affect at least 85% of the abortions taking place in the state. Many people don’t know they are pregnant within the first six weeks.
But the state wouldn’t enforce the law. SB 8 instead provides enforcement only by private citizens who would sue abortion providers and anyone involved in aiding or abetting an abortion after a “heartbeat” is detected.
This mechanism could allow SB 8 to skirt Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, within some limits.
So, let’s get this straight (Axios), the new law “incentivizes individuals to sue anyone suspected of helping a woman obtain an abortion — and awards at least $10,000 to people who do so successfully.”
Yes, you read that right. How someone unconnected to the woman seeking an abortion has any standing to sue her over it is Cloud cuckoo land lawmaking. This from the erstwhile opponents of frivolous lawsuits.
Steve Vladeck of The University of Texas School of Law explained in a tweet thread that the law is written to evade court intervention:
If all the bill did was ban most abortions in Texas, it would be easy enough for courts to block it while constitutional challenges are sorted out. Indeed, that’s what’s happened in other states that tried to adopt similarly aggressive restrictions on pre-viability abortions.
But the bill also leaves enforcement entirely to private parties, and not to the State. Most have seen this as a cynical ploy designed to turn neighbors against each other with regard to abortions …
The *procedural* reason why it does that is to make it much harder to *challenge* the restrictions in court—because it’s not obvious who providers can/should sue.
That’s deliberate; if the legislature was confident in its constitutionality, there’d be no need for such a ploy.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle cannot believe the new law says what it says:
And the Supreme Court said nothing/did nothing to stop it. It could still act at any time.
Elie Mystal (Above the Law) believes it possible that the court is waiting to see how much blowback the law will receive. It’s only a fool’s hope, he says, quoting Gandalf. But while the court doesn’t generally care about public opinion, it is not looking for Bounty Gate, either:
Setting neighbor against neighbor is the Republican way, Donald Trump’s management style, and the right-wing’s business model. It’s what you get when voters give them control of government.