Activists in Texas have filed a new lawsuit seeking to halt the state’s near-total ban on abortion that has been in effect for more than seven months.
The lawsuit takes aim at several opponents of abortion who have used the law to threaten legal action against abortion funds and prosecution against those who aid or abet the procedure, a feature of the legislation critics have argued incentivizes bounty hunters to target abortion providers. These actions are causing employees and donors to withhold financial support for abortion funds, according to attorneys for the Stigma Relief Fund, a nonprofit organization that assists women who can’t afford to pay for an abortion.
“Plaintiffs urgently need this court to stop Texas’s brazen defiance of the rule of law, uphold the federal constitutional rights of pregnant Texans, and restore the ability of abortion funds and their donors, employees and volunteers to fully serve Texas abortion patients,” the federal court filing states.
ABORTION AND GUN CASES DOMINATE BREYER’S FINAL MONTHS AS SUPREME COURT JUSTICE
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, seeks a declaratory judgment against the law as well as attorney’s fees.
The bill, signed into law last year, bans abortion once cardiac activity is detected in the womb, which can be as early as six weeks’ gestation and before most women even know they are pregnant. The law makes no exception for rape or incest.
Because the law empowers private citizens to sue abortion providers for infractions, it “incentivizes vigilante harassment” and has “dramatically reduced abortion access in Texas,” the plaintiffs said in their court filing.
“This has had an immediate and devastating impact on all Texans seeking abortion care, which is felt most acutely by the marginalized communities that abortion funds serve,” they continued.
The ban has forced roughly 1,400 Texans to travel out of state to receive abortions every month since the law took effect, according to research from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project. This has in turn caused severe financial burdens that must be addressed, the plaintiffs argued.
“Ironically, by banning abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, [the bill] has led to a significant increase in second-trimester abortions,” they wrote. “Exacerbating the problem, the cost of abortion care increases with gestational age, which often compounds delay. The longer someone is delayed, the more money they must raise to pay for the procedure, which traps patients with limited financial means in a terrible cycle.”
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Texas was the first state to ban abortions so early in the gestational process since Roe v. Wade, and last-ditch efforts to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court were unsuccessful.
Several state legislatures have since proposed similar bans, with Oklahoma passing a near-total abortion ban last week without exceptions for rape or incest.
