The Deviousness of Texas’s New Abortion Law
The statute is the culmination of a decades-long strategy to end abortion without actually banning abortion.
Last night, the Supreme Court faced an unprecedented emergency application. Unless the Court acted, abortion would be functionally illegal in Texas.
In May, the state had adopted a version of a “heartbeat bill” that went into effect today. So-called heartbeat bills prohibit abortions once a physician can detect fetal cardiac activity, usually around the sixth week of pregnancy, before most people know that they are. Texas lawmakers had considered such a bill before but balked at the prospect of a possible loss in court—. S.B. 8, the law that now prevails, promised to give conservative lawmakers : the ability to ban abortion with none of the risk.
