The Texas Supreme Court docket allowed a 1925 legislation banning abortion to take impact late on Friday evening, overturning a decrease courtroom ruling that had briefly blocked it.
The choice was the newest in a sequence of authorized battles throughout the nation following the Supreme Court docket’s resolution on June 24 to overturn Roe v. Wade, an almost half-century-old ruling that had established a constitutional proper to abortion nationwide.
In Texas, that meant a 1925 legislation written earlier than Roe that had banned abortions and punished those that carried out them with attainable imprisonment robotically went into impact, mentioned Ken Paxton, the state’s legal professional common. Although the legislation was not enforced after Roe was determined in 1973, it had however remained on the books.
That ban was briefly blocked by a Harris County choose after abortion clinics sued for a keep, arguing that it had successfully been repealed after the landmark Roe ruling.
On Saturday morning, Mr. Paxton known as the reversal of the keep a “pro-life victory!” on Twitter.
“Our state’s pre-Roe statutes banning abortion in Texas are 100% good legislation,” he wrote. “Litigation continues, however I’ll maintain profitable for Texas’s unborn infants.”
The State Supreme Court docket’s resolution on Friday partially overruled the choice of the decrease district courtroom. Either side will proceed to argue their case involving the outdated legislation on July 12 in entrance of that district courtroom. The lifting of the freeze didn’t permit for prison enforcement of the ban, the American Civil Liberties Union mentioned in a information launch. The group is representing abortion clinics within the authorized combat.
“Extremist politicians are on a campaign to power Texans into being pregnant and childbirth in opposition to their will, irrespective of how devastating the results,” mentioned Julia Kaye, an legal professional with the A.C.L.U. Reproductive Freedom Mission.
Even earlier than the overturning of Roe, a legislation that was handed final 12 months in Texas had allowed abortions solely as much as about six weeks of being pregnant. And when the Roe resolution was overturned, a “set off ban” was activated to ban all abortions in Texas from the second of fertilization, with uncommon exceptions together with to avoid wasting the lifetime of the mom. That legislation goes into impact on the finish of July.
Texas is one in every of a number of states the place abortion rights teams have shortly taken their marketing campaign to the courts, aiming to dam or delay abortion restrictions and bans from going into impact. By Friday, that they had succeeded in Utah, Kentucky, Louisiana and Florida.
