"Today, Texas law SB8 went into effect. This extreme Texas law blatantly violates the constitutional right established under Roe v. Wade and upheld as precedent for nearly half a century.
"The Texas law will significantly impair women’s access to the health care they need, particularly for communities of color and individuals with low incomes. And, outrageously, it deputizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion, which might even include family members, health care workers, front desk staff at a health care clinic, or strangers with no connection to the individual.
"My administration is deeply committed to the constitutional right established in Roe v. Wade nearly five decades ago and will protect and defend that right."
"Today, a new law takes effect in Texas that directly violates the precedent established in the landmark case of Roe v. Wade. This all-out assault on reproductive health effectively bans abortion for the nearly 7 million Texans of reproductive age. Patients in Texas will now be forced to travel out-of-state or carry their pregnancy to term against their will. This law will dramatically reduce access to reproductive care for women in Texas, particularly for women with low incomes and women of color. It also includes a disturbing provision that incentivizes private citizens to sue anyone who assists another person in receiving an abortion.
"The Biden-Harris Administration will always fight to protect access to healthcare and defend a woman’s right to make decisions about her body and determine her future."
Let's be perfectly clear: this is a Republican assault on reproductive freedom for women. It will be copied in other Republican states, and the Republican Supreme Court won't act because it fulfills their warped ideological agenda while not directly embroiling them in overturning a nearly 50 year old precedent.
The extremists in Texas' rotted out Republican party (a.k.a., the "party of life") are perfectly fine with restricting their access to a legal abortion or to family planning services, while at the same time allowing ammosexuals to open carry firearms without a license. Rigging future elections will ensure they're likely to get away with outrages like this in the foreseeable future.
A sharply divided Supreme Court early Thursday said it will not block a new Texas law that deputizes any Texan to enforce a six-week ban on abortions. Five justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — explained in a brief, unsigned majority opinion that the abortion advocates asking for an emergency stay "raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue," but they were unable to untangle the "complex and novel antecedent procedural questions" raised by the law.
The four dissenters — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan — argued in separate rebuttals that their five colleagues, without any real debate, were rewarding Texas lawmakers for inventing a novel scheme to stomp on decades of Supreme Court precedent.
"It was hard to figure out what the law the Texas Republicans enacted does, so we'll just let it stand" is a helluva skeevy excuse. But consider the sources.
