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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Texas clinics on Saturday canceled appointments they booked during a 48-hour repeal of the most restrictive abortion law in the US, which was back in effect as tired providers return to targeting the Supreme Court.
The Biden administration, which sued Texas over bill known as Senate Bill 8, has yet to say whether it will go that route after a federal appeals court reinstated the bill late Friday. The latest twist came just two days after a lower court in Austin overturned the law that bans abortion once cardiac activity is detected, usually about six weeks before some women know they are pregnant. She makes no exceptions to rape or incest.
The White House hadn’t issued an immediate statement on Saturday.
At least for now, the law is in the hands of the 5th US Court of Appeals, which allowed the restrictions to be reinstated pending further arguments. Meanwhile, abortion providers and patients in Texas are back to where they were for most of the past six weeks.
Out-of-state clinics, already inundated with Texan patients seeking abortions, were again the closest option for many women. Vendors say others will be forced to carry pregnancies to term or in hopes courts will overturn the law, which went into effect Sept. 1.
There are new questions as well – including whether anti-abortion advocates will try to punish Texan doctors who performed abortions during the brief window of time the law was suspended from late Wednesday to late Friday. Texas leaves enforcement in the hands of individuals who can collect $ 10,000 or more in damages if they successfully sue abortion providers who violate the restrictions.
Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, has set up a warning line to receive reports of violations. About a dozen calls were received after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman suspended the law, said John Seago, the group’s legislative director.
Although some Texan clinics said they had temporarily resumed abortions in patients who were longer than six weeks, Seago said his group had no lawsuits pending. He said the clinics’ public statements are inconsistent with what we saw on the ground, which includes a network of observers and crisis pregnancy centers.
“At the time of the litigation, I have no credible evidence that we would produce,” Seago said on Saturday.
Texas had about two dozen abortion clinics before the law went into effect. At least six clinics resumed abortions after six weeks of gestation during the time limit, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
At Whole Woman’s Health, which has four abortion clinics in Texas, President and CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller said she put the number of abortions at their sites for patients at “quite a few” instead of six weeks. She said her clinics were back to complying with the law and admitting the risks her doctors and staff had taken.
“Of course we are all concerned,” she said. “But we are also deeply committed to providing abortion treatment when it is legal, and we have.”
Pitman, the federal judge who halted Texas law on Wednesday in a 113-page statement, was appointed by President Barack Obama. He called the law an “insulting deprivation” of the constitutional right to abortion, but his verdict was quickly overturned – at least for the time being – in a unilateral order by the 5th district on Friday evening.
The same appeals court had previously allowed the Texas restrictions to go into effect in September in a separate lawsuit filed by abortion providers. This time, the court gave the Justice Department until 5 p.m. Tuesday to respond.
What happens after that is unclear, including how quickly the appeals court will act or whether it will require further arguments. Texas is filing for a permanent restraining order in the appellate court that would allow the law to continue during the trial.
Meanwhile, Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, urged the Supreme Court to “step in and stop this madness.” Last month, the Supreme Court allowed the law to go ahead in a 5-4 ruling, though it did so without ruling on the law’s constitutionality.
A 1992 Supreme Court ruling prevented states from banning abortions before viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the uterus, around 24 weeks after pregnancy. But the Texas version has outmaneuvered the courts because of its novel enforcement mechanism that leaves enforcement to private individuals rather than prosecutors, which critics claim is a bounty.
The Biden government could take the case back to the Supreme Court and ask it to quickly restore Pitman’s order, though it is unclear whether they will.
“I’m not very optimistic about what might happen in the Supreme Court,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, of the Justice Department’s chances.
“But there isn’t much downside either, is there?” he said. “The question is, what has changed since you last saw it? There is this full opinion, this full hearing before the judge and the record. So that can be enough. “
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