Protesters in Austin, Texas.
By the end of Tuesday, the Supreme Court could allow a Texas law that would effectively overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and they could do it from the shadow docket without hearing any oral arguments. Lawyers for abortion clinics appealed to the Supreme Court to block the Texas law, which would both ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and turn private citizens into bounty hunters, allowing them to sue to enforce the ban with the incentive of a $10,000 award if they successfully sue an abortion provider or health center worker who helped a woman obtain an abortion.
The deviousness of the law is astounding. At six weeks of gestation, many women aren't even yet aware that they are pregnant. Proponents of the law say that's when a fetal heartbeat begins. But the people who understand how biology works—doctors—describe what is happening at six weeks as a vibration in growing fetal tissue. There is no heart. There is nothing in that collection of tissue that could exist outside the womb, a biological fact that has been the basis of previous court decisions protecting a woman's right to choose to have an abortion prior to viability. The six-week ban violates both Roe and Casey, but where Texas lawmakers got sneaky was turning enforcement over to private individuals, who are much more difficult to sue than the state.
Because private individuals would enforce the law through lawsuits against anyone who provides or “aids and abets” an abortion, it's much harder for abortion providers and advocates to challenge the restrictions in court. They can't sue the state, and it's much harder to determine whether providers can or should be sued. This law was designed to prevent judges from blocking its implementation by taking government officials out of the enforcement.
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