• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Biden administration asks judge to halt strict Texas abortion law

October 2, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

October 2, 2021

By Sarah N. Lynch and Jan Wolfe

(Reuters) -President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday urged a judge to block a near-total ban on abortion imposed by Texas – the strictest such law in the nation – in a key moment in the ferocious legal fight over abortion access in the United States.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 1 https://ift.tt/3hhSBL5 allowed the Republican-backed law to take effect even as litigation over its legality continues in lower courts. The U.S. Justice Department eight days later sued in federal court https://ift.tt/2XBOnaz to try to invalidate it.

During a hearing in the Texas capital of Austin, Justice Department lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman to block the law temporarily, saying the state’s Republican legislature and governor enacted it in an open defiance of the Constitution.

“There is no doubt under binding constitutional precedents that a state may not ban abortions at six weeks,” said Brian Netter, the lead Justice Department attorney on the case.

“Texas knew this but, it wanted a 6-week ban anyway. So this state resorted to an unprecedented scheme of vigilante justice.”

The Texas law bans abortions starting at six weeks of pregnancy, a point when many women may not realize they are pregnant. About 85% to 90% of abortions are performed after six weeks. Texas makes no exception for cases of rape and incest.

It also lets ordinary citizens enforce the ban, rewarding them at least $10,000 if they successfully sue anyone who helped provide an abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected.

Will Thompson, an attorney in the Texas Attorney General’s Office, countered the Justice Department’s arguments, saying there were plenty of opportunities for people in Texas to challenge the law on their own, and claiming the Department’s arguments were filled with “hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric.”

“This is not some kind of vigilante scheme, as opposing counsel suggests,” said Thompson. “This is a scheme that uses lawful process of justice in Texas.”

Pitman, who was appointed by Democratic former President Barack Obama in 2014, at one point seemed skeptical of Thompson’s arguments, telling him Texas seems to have “gone to great lengths” to make its abortion ban difficult to challenge in court.

The judge said: “My obvious question to you is: If the state is so confident in the constitutionality of the limitations on woman’s access to abortion, then why did it go to such great lengths to create this private cause of action rather than do it directly?”

Thompson responded that laws providing for enforcement are not as unusual as the Justice Department has claimed.

In the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, the Supreme Court recognized a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

The high court in December is due to hear arguments over the legality of a Mississippi abortion law in a case in which officials from that state are asking the justices to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

The Mississippi and Texas laws are among a series of Republican-backed measures passed by various states restricting abortion.

Since the Texas law went into effect, the four Whole Woman’s Health abortion clinics across the state have reported that https://ift.tt/3a1uNXv patient visits have plummeted and some staff have quit.

In addition to infringing on women’s constitutional rights to seek an abortion, the Justice Department argued that the law also impedes the federal government’s own ability to offer abortion-related services.

In an effort to counter those claims, attorneys for the state on Friday played clips from depositions of various senior U.S. government officials.

In one clip, lawyers interrogated Alix McLearen, a senior official at the Bureau of Prisons who, in response to questions, testified that there were currently no pregnant inmates being held at certain detention facilities in Texas.

In another clip, Laurie Bodenheimer of the Office of Personnel Management was asked whether any insurance carriers had raised concerns about the impact or effect of the Texas law.

“To my knowledge no carrier has raised concerns about SB8,” she said.

The Justice Department’s Netter told the judge that Texas had cherry-picked some of the sound bites in the videos and edited out the portions in which Department attorneys had objected during the depositions.

Netter noted, for instance, that Texas conveniently omitted a portion of McLearen’s testimony in which she said the prisons bureau has pregnant inmates incarcerated currently at FMC Carswell, which he noted is “the only secure medical facility for women” in the entire country.

“It is irreparable injury for there to be a violation of the Supremacy Clause,” Netter said, referring to the Constitutional principle that establishes that federal laws have supremacy over state laws.

More than 600 marches are planned around the United States on Saturday to protest the Texas law.

In Washington, D.C., protesters will march to the U.S. Supreme Court to decry the court’s 5-4 decision in September that denied a request from abortion and women’s health providers to enjoin enforcement of the ban.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham, Alistair Bell and Dan Grebler)

Source Link Biden administration asks judge to halt strict Texas abortion law

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. China Evergrande warns of further property sales drop, liquidity crunch
  2. Political economist Neil Malholtra on why some in Silicon Valley turned on Gavin Newsom
  3. Two Fed officials retire amid scrutiny over investment trades
  4. Chile cenbank to decide on roll-out of digital currency in 2022

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • Exceptional 183-Million-Year-Old Fossil With Soft Tissues Intact Is New Species Of Giant Marine Reptile
  • White Raven: This Normally Black Bird Can Be Surprisingly Pale
  • Solar Systems 100 Times Smaller Than Ours Are Possible – Thanks To Rogue Planets
  • North Sea “Sinkites” Appear To Defy Rules Of Geology On Never-Before-Seen Scale
  • The Iberian Ribbed Newt Might Just Have The World’s Most Metal Defense Mechanism
  • There’s Only One Black Moon In 2025 And It’s Happening This Month
  • For First Time In Decades, Winter-Run Chinook Salmon Spotted In Upstream Californian River
  • JWST Shines New Light On 2500 Sources In Iconic Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image
  • Humans And Neanderthals Hooked Up Three Times. Here’s Where It Happened
  • What Happened To Percy Fawcett? The Explorer Who Went In Search “The Lost City Of Z”
  • COVID-19 And Flu Could “Reignite” Dormant Cancer Cells And Bring On New Tumors
  • Do Hair And Nails Really Grow Faster In Summer?
  • Wondrous And Worrying Sights: What Explorers Discovered At The Bottom Of The Great Blue Hole
  • What’s The Biggest Volcano In The World? It Depends How You’re Measuring
  • “Every Species On The Planet Self-Medicates In Some Way”: How Wild Animals Use Medicine
  • Deepest Complex Ecosystem Ever Discovered 10 Kilometers Below The Sea, 892-Kilometer “Megaflash” Lightning Sets New World Record, And Much More This Week
  • The Life And Death Of David Vetter, The Boy Who Lived His Whole Life In A Bubble
  • Time’s Arrow Within Glass Appears To Go Both Ways, Raising Huge Questions
  • World’s “Oldest Baby” Born From Embryo Frozen In 1994 In New World Record
  • What Can Spain’s “Tunnel Of Bones” Tell Us About The Fate Of Human Species On The Brink Of Extinction?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version