Supreme Court Refuses to Block Texas Abortion Law in Late Night Decision
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block a Texas law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
The decision emerged late Wednesday night with a decision of 5-to-4. Trump-appointed justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined fellow conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Dissenting were conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices.
Writing for NPR, Nina Totenberg reports:
The decision left open the option for abortion providers to challenge the Texas law in other ways in the future, leaving open the possibility–even likelihood– that the case will return to the Supreme Court, though not for months or longer.
The opinion was unsigned. It said the abortion providers didn’t properly address “complex and novel antecedent procedural questions” in their case.
“In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit,” the decision said. “In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts.”
The ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy is well before most women even know they are pregnant and is at odds with the Supreme Court’s precedents, which prohibit states from banning abortions prior to fetal viability — usually between 22 and 24 weeks. The Texas bill, however, was structured to insulate the law from being tested quickly in court.
Abortion rights have been an enormous political issue over the past, well, several decades, but former President Donald Trump’s promise to appoint justices that were eager to overturn Roe v. Wade. This decision effectively ends that protection for citizens of Texas, particularly those who do not have the means to travel to states that offer legal abortion procedures and sets a precedent for more states to follow the same playbook.
