WSJ Editorial Board Blasts Texas Abortion Law ‘Blunder’: ‘An Awful Precedent that Conservatives Should Hate’
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The Wall Street Journal editorial board has come out against a new and controversial anti-abortion bill recently passed in Texas that the Supreme Court has thus far refused to block.
The WSJ editorial board is known not just as a conservative outlet but a thought leader from which many others follow their lead, which makes this opinion even more remarkable as it flies in the face of the thinking among many in the Republican party.
Titled Texas’ Abortion Law Blunder, the essay mocks the law with “Cue the hysterics about the end of abortion rights,” and calls the law is a “misfire” even for those who oppose abortion and makes clear that in their opinion, neither side of the abortion/choice/life debate should be confident the law will be upheld.
It then makes clear the legal problems this law features and how the underlying thinking can serve as a dangerous precedent to be exploited on an endless list of controversial issues, and not just in red states:
For starters, the Texas statute clearly violates the Court’s Roe v. Wade (1973) and Casey(1992) precedents by making abortion illegal during the first trimester without exceptions for rape or incest—and it does so in a slippery way to duck federal judicial review. Most laws delegate enforcement to public officials. This one delegates exclusive enforcement to private citizens, who are authorized to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks. Citizens who prevail in their civil lawsuits are entitled to at least $10,000 per abortion along with legal costs.
The law sets an awful precedent that conservatives should hate. Could California allow private citizens to sue individuals for hate speech? Or New York deputize private lawsuits against gun owners? Texas argues that abortion providers don’t have standing to challenge the law because the state isn’t enforcing it and neither at this point is any private citizen. Thus there is no case or controversy, which is what courts are supposed to settle. This is technically correct and it is why the five Justices declined to enjoin the law.
The WSJ editorial board then goes after the politics of the new law and goes after Texas AG Ken Paxton, sarcastically asking if he is a “progressive plant.” The essay explains:
Democrats are already having a field day with the Texas law. “This law is so extreme it does not even allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest,” President Biden said in a statement. Look for Democrats to raise the political pressure even higher on the Supreme Court this coming term when it hears a Mississippi case that bans abortion after 15 weeks. The Justices could uphold the Mississippi law by narrowing Casey’s “undue burden” standard. But the left will flog the Texas law and proclaim that upholding the Mississippi law is a fast track to overturning Roe.
Sometimes we wonder if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a progressive plant. His ill-conceived legal attack against ObamaCare backfired on Republicans in last year’s election and lost at the Supreme Court. Now he and his Texas mates are leading with their chins on abortion. How about thinking first?
Read the full essay at the WSJ (paywall.)
