A US federal judge ordered Texas to suspend a law that effectively prevents women from having an abortion in the state.
The law prohibits women from having an abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is after about six weeks of pregnancy. Many women would not even know they are pregnant in that timeframe.
Texas Republicans have sought to escape the fate of other “heartbeat bills” that have been struck down as unconstitutional by putting enforcement in the hands of citizens who can sue abortion providers or others who assist them with an abortion.
That includes people who help pay for the abortion or individuals who might transport them to a women’s health center for the procedure, including ride-share drivers.
Uber and Lyft have vowed to pay their drivers’ legal fees should they be sued under the law.
District Court Judge Robert Pittman issued the ruling late Wednesday in the first legal blow to the law, which is one of the most restrictive in the US.
He said in a 113-page ruling that the state’s Republican legislators “contrived an unprecedented and transparent statutory scheme whereby it created a private cause of action in which private citizens with no personal interest in or connection to a person seeking an abortion would be able to interfere with that right using the state’s judicial system, judges, and court officials.”
- From the moment S.B. 8 went into effect, women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution,” he wrote, using the law’s formal name. “This Court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right.-
Texas officials have informed the court that they plan to appeal Pittman’s ruling.
Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, denounced Pittman’s ruling in no uncertain terms, saying it “is the legacy of Roe v. Wade: Judges catering to the abortion industry, crafting a conclusion first & then searching the depths of legal literature for a rationale later.”
The case mentioned in the group’s tweet affirmed in 1973 a woman’s right to an abortion by striking down Texas laws that criminalized abortion.
Planned Parenthood, the US’ leading abortion rights advocacy group, hailed the ruling, but said it is “overdue,” and vowed to “continue fighting this ban in court, until we are certain that Texans’ ability to access abortion is protected.”