AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas Supreme Court has blocked an order that briefly allowed some clinics to resume abortions in the state, the latest development in U.S. legal wrangling since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
On Friday night, the court stayed a three-day order by a Houston judge who said clinics could resume abortions up to six weeks into pregnancy. The practical impact of the decision was hard to gauge at the start of the holiday weekend.
Planned Parenthood affiliates in Texas have not resumed abortion services even after the restraining order was imposed on Tuesday.
“Nothing has changed operationally with the state Supreme Court’s decision,” spokeswoman Jante Metzger said.
Whole Woman’s Health, which has four clinics in Texas, said it would begin operating through a waiting list and resume abortion services, but that was before the Supreme Court intervened at the request of Attorney General Ken Paxton. No one at Whole Woman’s Health could immediately be reached for comment Saturday.
At issue is a long-dormant criminal law from 1925 that targeted individuals who performed abortions. Clinics argued it was invalid after abortion became a constitutional right in the US in 1973. However, the US Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe decision on June 24, leaving abortion policy up to the states.
“Victory for life! … Litigation continues, but I will continue to win for the unborn babies of Texas,” Paxton, a Republican, said via Twitter.
Separately, Texas has a 2021 law designed to ban abortions if Roe is overturned. It goes into effect in the coming weeks.
“Extremist politicians are on a crusade to force Texans to get pregnant and give birth against their will, no matter how devastating the consequences,” said Julia Kay of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Providers and patients across the country are struggling to navigate the evolving legal landscape surrounding abortion and access laws.
In Florida, a law banning abortions after 15 weeks went into effect Friday, a day after a judge called it a violation of the state constitution and said he would sign an order temporarily blocking it next week. The ban could have broader implications in the South, as Florida currently allows more access to the procedure than neighboring states.
Even when women travel outside countries with abortion bans, they may have fewer options to terminate their pregnancies because the prospect of prosecution follows them.
Planned Parenthood of Montana this week stopped providing medical abortions to patients who live in states with bans.
Planned Parenthood North Central States, which offers the procedure in Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska, tells patients they must take both pills in the plan as long as they are in a state that allows for an abortion.
The use of the pill has been the most common method of terminating a pregnancy since 2000, when the US Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone, the main drug used in medical abortions. Taken with misoprostol, a drug that causes spasms that empty the womb, it is an abortion pill.
Also Friday, Google, the company behind the Internet’s dominant search engine and the Android software that powers most smartphones, said it would automatically scrub information about users who visit abortion clinics or other places that could raise potential legal issues.
In addition to abortion clinics, Google cited counseling centers, infertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics and cosmetic surgery clinics as destinations that will be deleted from users’ location history. Users have always had the ability to edit their location history themselves, but now Google will do it for them as an extra layer of protection.
“We are committed to providing robust privacy protections to the people who use our products, and we will continue to look for new ways to strengthen and improve those protections,” Jen Fitzpatrick, Google’s senior vice president, wrote in a blog post.
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White reported from Detroit.
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