The Texas Supreme Court late Friday night allowed a 1925 law outlawing abortion to go into effect, overturning a lower court ruling that temporarily blocked it.
The decision was the latest in a series of legal battles across the country since the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, a half-century-old decision that established a nationwide constitutional right to abortion.
In Texas, that means a 1925 law written before Roe that bans abortions and punishes those who perform them with possible prison terms automatically takes effect, said Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general. Although it was not implemented after the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe decision, it remained on the books.
That ban was temporarily blocked by a Harris County judge after abortion clinics sued to stay it, arguing that it had effectively been lifted since the landmark Roe decision.
On Saturday morning, Mr Paxton called the lifting of the stay a “victory for life!” on Twitter.
“Our state’s pre-Roe laws banning abortion in Texas are 100% good law. The litigation is ongoing, but I will continue to win for the unborn babies of Texas,” he said.
The state Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday partially overturned the lower district court’s decision. Both sides will continue to argue their case about the old law on July 12 in that district court. Lifting the freeze prevented criminal enforcement of the ban, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a news release. The group represents abortion clinics in the legal battle.
“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, an attorney with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project.
Even before Roe was overturned, a law passed last year in Texas allowed abortions only up to about six weeks into pregnancy. And when Roe was overturned, a “trigger ban” was activated that would ban all abortions in Texas from the moment of fertilization, with rare exceptions, including to save the mother’s life. The law comes into effect at the end of July.
Texas is one of several states where abortion rights groups quickly took their campaign to the courts, seeking to block or delay abortion restrictions and bans. By Friday, they had succeeded in Utah, Kentucky, Louisiana and Florida.
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