San Antonio-based physician Alan Braid has been sued for defying the Texas abortion ban, a decision he admitted to last week expecting a legal challenge.
WHITE HOUSE ‘STRONGLY SUPPORTS’ BILL THAT WOULD BLOCK STATE-LEVEL ABORTION RESTRICTIONS
The civil suit will be the first legal test of the law’s constitutionality. The ban on abortions after six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant, does not make exceptions for cases of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. It is enforced by private citizens, who are authorized to sue anyone who aids and abets the procedure for a minimum of $10,000. People who drive patients to a suspected abortion, for instance, are susceptible to legal action if caught.
The law went into effect on Sept. 1, and abortion rights advocates were powerless to stop it when the Supreme Court declined to issue a temporary injunction one day later. Less than a week after the law was implemented, Braid said he performed an abortion on a woman still in her first trimester but beyond the six-week cutoff.
“I fully understood that there could be legal consequences — but I wanted to make sure that Texas didn’t get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested,” he wrote in a column in the Washington Post.
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The abortion-rights advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights has pledged to defend him in legal proceedings, and other advocacy groups are expected to join his defense.
