AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Supreme Court allowing a new Texas lawthat bans most abortions is the biggest curb to the constitutional right to an abortion in decades, and Republicans in other states are already considering similar measures.
The law prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks — before some women know they’re pregnant. Courts have blocked other states from imposing similar restrictions, but Texas’ law differs significantly because it leaves enforcement up to private citizens through civil lawsuits instead of criminal prosecutors.
Here’s what to know about the new Texas law that took effect Tuesday, which already has abortion clinics in neighboring states reporting a surge in the number of Texas women seeking the procedure:
WHAT DOES THE TEXAS LAW DO?
It allows any private citizen to sue Texas abortion providers who violate the law, as well as anyone who “aids or abets” a woman getting the procedure. Abortion patients themselves, however, cannot be sued.
The law does not make exceptions for rape or incest. The person bringing the lawsuit — who does not have to have a connection to the woman getting an abortion — is entitled to at least $10,000 in damages if they prevail in court. Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, launched a website to receive tips about suspected violations and says it has attorneys ready to bring lawsuits.
HOW MANY PEOPLE COULD BE AFFECTED BY THE TEXAS LAW?
The new Texas law could affect thousands of women seeking abortions, though precise estimates are difficult. In 2020, Texas facilities performed about 54,000 abortions on residents. More than 45,000 of those occurred at eight weeks of pregnancy or less. Some of those abortions still could have been legal under the new law, if they occurred before cardiac activity was detected.
HOW IS THE TEXAS LAW DIFFERENT FROM THOSE IN OTHER STATES THAT HAVE TRIED TO RESTRICT ABORTION EARLY IN PREGNANCY?
The key difference is the enforcement mechanism. The Texas law relies on citizens suing abortion providers over alleged violations. Other states sought to enforce their statutes through government actions like criminal charges against physicians who provide abortions.
Texas is one of 14 states with laws either banning abortion entirely or prohibiting it after eight weeks or less of pregnancy. The rest have all been put on hold by courts. Most recently, a court halted a new Arkansas law that would have banned all abortions unless necessary to save the life of the mother in a medical emergency. Other states with blocked laws banning abortions early in pregnancy are Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.
HOW DID THE TEXAS ABORTION LAW COME ABOUT?
Texas has long been a major battleground over abortion rights and access, including a 2013 law that closed more than half of the 40-plus abortion clinics in the state before it was blocked by the Supreme Court.
Emboldened by victories in the 2020 elections, Republicans responded with a hard-right agenda this year that included loosening gun laws and further tightening what are already some of the nation’s strictest voting rules. Anti-abortion groups say the new law was in response to frustration over prosecutors refusing to enforce other abortion restrictions already on the books.
Before Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law in May, voters in Lubbock, Texas, approved an ordinance similarly intended to outlaw abortion in the city by allowing family members to sue an abortion provider.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
A case is still proceeding in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, though the timing of future action is unclear.
WHAT IMPLICATIONS ARE THERE FOR ABORTION LAWS IN OTHER STATES?
The Supreme Court’s action does not reinstate any stricken abortion laws in other states. But “essentially, the Supreme Court has now given other states a roadmap for circumscribing Roe vs. Wade,” said Steven Schwinn, a constitutional law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Indeed, some Republican lawmakers already are talking about following suit.
In Arkansas, Republican state Sen. Jason Rapert on Thursday tweeted that he planned to file legislation mirroring Texas’ law for the Legislature to take up when it reconvenes this fall. But it’s unclear whether that will be allowed, because the session’s agenda currently is limited to congressional redistricting and COVID-19 legislation.
In Mississippi, Republican state Sen. Chris McDaniel said Thursday that he would “absolutely” consider filing legislation to match the Texas law.
“I think most conservative states in the South will look at this inaction by the court and will see that as perhaps a chance to move on that issue,” McDaniel said.
The Mississippi Legislature is scheduled to start meeting in January. The Supreme Court will hear arguments this fall on a 2018 Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy — a case that is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.
COULD STATES TAKE A SIMILAR “CITIZENS” ENFORCEMENT APPROACH TO LAWS ON OTHER HOT-BUTTON ISSUES?
Some states already have turned to citizens to enforce new laws.
A Missouri law that took effect last week allows citizens to sue local law enforcement agencies whose officers knowingly enforce any federal gun laws. Police and sheriff’s departments can face fines of up to $50,000 per occurrence. The law was backed by Republicans who fear Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration could enact restrictive gun policies.
In Kansas, a new law prompted by frustration over coronavirus restrictions allows residents to file lawsuits challenging mask mandates and limits on public gatherings imposed by counties. Last month, the Kansas Supreme Court allowed enforcement of the law to proceed while it considers an appeal of a lower court ruling that declared the law unconstitutional.
Utah also took a similar strategy on pornography last year, passing a law that allows citizens to sue websites that fail to display a warning about the effects of “obscene materials” on minors. Though adult-entertainment groups warned it was a violation of free speech, many sites have complied with the law to avoid the expense of a possible onslaught of legal challenges.
Citizens filing their own lawsuits has long been a fixture of environmental and disability-rights law, said Travis Brandon, an associate professor at Belmont University College of Law. Environmental groups, for example, help file suits against businesses accused of violating federal pollution permits.
In California, Proposition 65 allows people who might have been exposed to potentially carcinogenic materials to both file their own lawsuits and collect a kind of “bounty” if they win. Those laws are different, though, in that people generally must show they have been directly affected by a violation of the law, a feature missing from the new Texas measure, Brandon said.
___
David A. Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri. Associated Press writers Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi; and Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.
Seeing danger, some in GOP leery of Texas abortion law
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Almost instantly after most abortions were banned in Texas, Democrats were decrying the new law as unconstitutional, an assault on women’s health that must be challenged. But the reaction from many Republicans on the other side hasn’t been nearly as emphatic.
Though some in the GOP are celebrating the moment as a long-sought win for the anti-abortion rights movement, others are minimizing the meaning of the Supreme Court’s Wednesday midnight decision that allowed the bill to take effect. A few are even slamming the court and the law.
Or dodging.
“I’m pro-life,” said Republican Glenn Youngkin, a GOP candidate for governor in increasingly Democratic Virginia, where the only open governor’s race in the nation is coming up in November. When pressed on the Texas law by a reporter, he quickly noted that he supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest and where the mother’s life is in danger — exceptions notably not included in the new law.
The mixed reactions illustrate the political risks for the GOP as their anti-abortion allies begin actually achieving goals they have long sought. Americans are hardly of one mind on the issue, and loudly defending the nation’s toughest curbs — in Virginia or political battlegrounds like Georgia, Arizona or Florida — in next year’s midterm elections won’t be hazard-free.
“It is going to be a very motivating issue for women who haven’t typically been single-issue pro-choice voters,” said Republican pollster Christine Matthews. That includes suburban women and independents in swing House districts and competitive governor’s races who in past elections didn’t believe Roe v. Wade was truly under threat, Matthews said.
The new Texas law represents the most significant threat yet to the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision establishing the right to an abortion. Surveys suggest that ruling still has broad support — 69% of voters in last year’s elections said Roe v. Wade should be left as is, compared with just 29% saying it should be overturned, according to AP VoteCast, a poll of the electorate.
Democrats and abortion-rights advocates, who have sometimes been frustrated by voters taking access for granted, vowed Thursday to use the moment to wake people up. They promised to go after not just GOP candidates and office holders who support the Texas measure and others like it but also corporations that support them. Some reignited calls to end Senate filibuster rules to give abortion access a better chance at passage in Congress.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would soon vote on codifying Roe v. Wade into law, though chances in the Senate are all but nil.
Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe already has been making abortion a key issue. He points to secretly recorded video in which Youngkin tells a woman posing as an abortion opponent that he supports defunding Planned Parenthood but can’t talk about it publicly because “as a campaign topic, sadly, that in fact won’t win my independent votes that I have to get.”
On Thursday McAuliffe warned that if Youngkin wins and Republicans take over the state House ”there’s a good chance that we could see Virginia go the way of Texas.”
The Texas law prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and often before women know they’re pregnant. Rather than be enforced by government authorities, the law gives citizens the right to file civil suits and collect damages against anyone aiding an abortion.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, tweeted that she wanted her office to compare her state’s laws with the new Texas one “to make sure we have the strongest pro-life laws on the books in SD.”
But such views were hardly universal in her party.
In South Carolina, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster this year signed a restriction requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds checking for cardiac activity and prohibiting abortion if it’s found, unless the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, or the mother’s life was in danger.
Asked Thursday if he would support a Texas-style bill, such as one without exceptions for rape and incest, McMaster said he viewed South Carolina’s law as “superior.”
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called the Texas law “extreme and harmful.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell downplayed the Supreme Court’s action as “a highly technical decision.”
Indeed, the conservative-majority court did not rule on the constitutionality of the Texas law. The justices instead refused to block its implementation and issued a brief statement saying the decision “in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts.”
The justices’ role ensures that the court’s makeup will be part of the revived political debate. Liberal lawmakers backed by advocates who helped power President Joe Biden to office want to expand the number of justices to rebalance power.
“Democrats can either abolish the filibuster and expand the court, or do nothing as millions of people’s bodies, rights and lives are sacrificed for far-right minority rule,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote on Twitter.
While a majority of American support Roe v. Wade, abortion opponents have typically been more likely to let the issue determine their votes. According to AP VoteCast, just 3% of voters in the 2020 presidential election called abortion the single most important issue facing the country, but they leaned resoundingly toward Republican President Donald Trump, 89% to just 9% for Democrat Biden. In a separate question, 18% of voters called Supreme Court nominations “the single most important factor” in their presidential votes. Those voters leaned toward Biden by a relatively narrow margin, 53% to 46%.
A June poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that most Americans think abortion should be limited after the first trimester, but about 6 in 10 said it should usually be legal in the first three months of pregnancy. More than 8 in 10 said it should be legal in cases of rape or incest.
The poll found that younger adults are especially likely to support legal abortion. Sixty-three percent of those under age 45 said abortion should usually be legal, compared with 51% of those 45 and older. Still, even young adults support some limits on abortion based on the time of pregnancy, with majorities across all age groups saying most abortions should be illegal by the third trimester.
___
Emily Swanson in Washington and Meg Kinnard in Houston contributed to this report. Burnett reported from Chicago.
GOP-led states see Texas law as model to restrict abortions
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Republican states that have passed increasingly tough abortion restrictions only to see them blocked by the federal courts have a new template in an unusually written Texas law that represents the most far-reaching curb on abortions in nearly half a century.
On Thursday, Republican lawmakers in at least half a dozen states said they planned to introduce bills using the Texas law as a model, hoping it provides a pathway to enacting the kind of abortion crackdown they have sought for years.
In Mississippi, Republican state Sen. Chris McDaniel said he would “absolutely” consider filing legislation to match the Texas law after a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court let it stand.
“I think most conservative states in the South will look at this inaction by the court and will see that as perhaps a chance to move on that issue,” he said.
The Texas law, which took effect Wednesday, prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and before many women know they’re pregnant. While a dozen states have tried to enact bans early in pregnancy, those laws have been blocked by courts.
Texas may have found an end-run around the federal courts by enacting an unusual enforcement scheme that authorizes private citizens to file lawsuits in state court against abortion providers and anyone involved in aiding an abortion, including someone who drives a woman to a clinic. The law includes a minimum award of $10,000 for a successful lawsuit, but does not have government officials criminally enforce the law.
In addition to Mississippi, GOP lawmakers and abortion opponents in at least five other Republican-controlled states — Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, North Dakota and South Dakota — said they were considering pushing bills similar to the Texas law and its citizen-enforcement provision.
“Even though you may have pro-life legislators, you do not always have pro-life bureaucrats who are willing to do enforcement inspections,” said Indiana state Sen. Liz Brown, a Republican who has been the sponsor of several anti-abortion bills adopted in recent years.
Republicans for years have turned to statehouses in conservative states to find new ways to erode abortion rights enshrined by the high court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The Supreme Court — at least for now — has cleared a path forward for them.
“We’re excited, and we really do think that the heartbeat bill strategy is working,” said Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center, which opposes abortions.
Idaho passed a law this year with similar restrictions to Texas, but it will only go into effect if a U.S. appeals court upholds another state’s law, a condition that has not been met.
Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert on Thursday tweeted that he planned to file legislation mirroring Texas’ law when lawmakers reconvene this fall. The Republican lawmaker sponsored a 2013 “heartbeat” abortion ban that was later struck down by federal courts and another outright ban enacted this year that a federal judge has blocked.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, said the state should wait until the more stringent anti-abortion Arkansas law receives a final judgment.
Hutchinson called the court’s ruling on Texas’ law a “procedural victory” for abortion opponents, but said it doesn’t reflect the court’s view on whether Roe v. Wade should be reversed. Overturning that decision is abortion opponents’ foremost goal.
In Tennessee, Stacy Dunn, the president of Tennessee Right to Life, said she is hopeful the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Texas law to go in effect means the high court will rule to reverse Roe. Ten states, including Tennessee, have laws that would effectively outlaw most abortions should Roe v. Wade be overturned.
“This Texas law could be a ray of light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel, and our state is ready,” Dunn said in a statement.
Democrats also anticipated the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority overturning Roe, although they fear a ruling striking it down would leave old state laws outlawing abortions in effect.
“Reproductive freedom in our state is built on case law,” said New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, as he pushed for state lawmakers to enact a bill that would enshrine access to abortions.
“All of that case law is in turn built on the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade. If the foundation of that series of case laws is impacted, impaired, taken away, the entire reality in our state falls like a house of cards, which is why we need to, as soon as possible, put this protection into statute.”
In New Mexico, Democratic state Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero of Albuquerque said she was angered by the Texas law because it might lead to underground abortion procedures that endanger the lives of women.
Roybal Caballero, a “Catholic for choice” in her words, wants New Mexico to provide safe passage to anyone seeking medical care, including abortion procedures that she believes should be a matter of personal choice. A clinic in Albuquerque is one of only a few independent facilities in the country that perform abortions close to the third trimester without conditions.
“We don’t want to go back to the 1960s and 1970s underground days of illegal abortions,” she said. “It’s our decision. And if it’s going to be our decision, it should be a safe and healthy outcome.”
___
Associated Press writers Michael Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey; Tom Davies in Indianapolis; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Ark.; Andrew Field in Topeka, Kansas; Chris Grygiel in Seattle; Meg Kinnard in Houston; Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville; Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, N.M.; James MacPherson in Bismarck, N.D.; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss.; and Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.