Abortion update: The Supreme Court chooses to let states gut access to abortions, leaving Roe nominally intact

Their bodies just got banned on real hard

Another civil liberty bites the dust, thanks to the

fascist Republican Party

The Supreme Court to leave standing the Texas law that guts abortion rights. The New York Times writes:

The law, which prohibits most abortions after six weeks and went into effect on Wednesday, was drafted by Texas lawmakers with the goal of frustrating efforts to challenge it in federal court.

The Supreme Court refused just before midnight on Wednesday to block a Texas law prohibiting most abortions, less than a day after it took effect and became the most restrictive abortion measure in the nation.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s three liberal members in dissent.

The majority opinion was unsigned and consisted of a single long paragraph. It said the abortion providers who had challenged the law in an emergency application to the court had not made their case in the face of “complex and novel” procedural questions. The majority stressed that it was not ruling on the constitutionality of the Texas law and did not mean to limit “procedurally proper challenges” to it.

NPR reported this morning that as of today, abortion providers in Texas were turning patients away. The Texas law backed by fascist Texas Republican legislature forces women outside the time limit will be forced to either carry to term and bear a child she does not want, or leave the state to gat an abortion.  

Other fascist Republican state legislatures will no doubt rush to copy and pass the Texas law in their states. If that scenario turns out to come true, then the good news is that abortions will still be legal in states that do not oppose abortions. It seem likely from the way the decision is worded that abortion provider will try to make a better case. That seems futile, but time will tell. Those Christian nationalist judges are hell-bent on getting rid of abortion come hell or high water.

It is a puzzle as to why Roberts voted as he did. My guess is that he wants to pretend to be a judge, instead of a radical Christian nationalist politician who wears a black robe as his work uniform. In his dissent, Roberts wrote that he would have blocked the law while appeals moved through the courts. He wrote this: “The statutory scheme before the court is not only unusual, but unprecedented. The legislature has imposed a prohibition on abortions after roughly six weeks, and then essentially delegated enforcement of that prohibition to the populace at large. The desired consequence appears to be to insulate the state from responsibility for implementing and enforcing the regulatory regime.”

The law allows for Texas citizens to report on violations of the law. Yehaw! Here come them law and order snitches! Rat 'em out!

Note: The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to an anti-abortion law from Mississippi this term. That decision will probably come down by June 30, 2022. If the court decides to get rid of Roe v. Wade and make abortions illegal in all states, that is the case where Roe kill decision will come from.

Question: Why would anyone want to live in Texas, low taxes, great climate, deregulated electricity, no abortions and/or something(s) else?