Latest abortion ban halted for now

We follow the script.

Right there with them

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked Texas’ ban on abortions, a prohibition state officials said was necessary to preserve medical resources during the coronavirus pandemic.

The ruling came less than a week after Texas abortion providers announced a lawsuit against top state officials, challenging Attorney General Ken Paxton’s assertion that Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order banning all procedures deemed to be not medically necessary should be interpreted to include abortions.

The court granted the abortion providers’ motion to temporarily block the state from enforcing the order, which was set to expire April 21, as it relates to abortions. The temporary restraining order will expire April 13.

“Regarding a woman’s right to a pre-fetal-viability abortion, the Supreme Court has spoken clearly,” wrote U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel. “There can be no outright ban on such a procedure.”

Yeakel also wrote that people seeking abortions would “suffer serious and irreparable harm” if the ban were allowed and that temporarily blocking the executive order “will not disserve the public interest.”

“The attorney general’s interpretation of the Executive Order prevents Texas women from exercising what the Supreme Court has declared is their fundamental constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before a fetus is viable,” Yeakel wrote.

See here for the background. The next page of this script is the state appealing to the Fifth Circuit, and the Fifth Circuit inventing some reason to give the state what it asked for. After that it gets a little murky, but by then it almost doesn’t matter because the state gets to do what it wants in the interim. In theory, once the emergency order is lifted then the justification for this ban goes away, but if you don’t think there’s some way that Abbott and Paxton might try to work around that, you’re not thinking hard enough. The Current and Slate have more.

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11 Responses to Latest abortion ban halted for now

  1. Paul Kubosh says:

    Glad to know we are saving space in our Hospitals for Abortions. I was real worried about that.

  2. mollusk says:

    Abortions are taking up very little hospital space (if any at all) because they are almost always conducted in clinics or at home with medication.

  3. Jason Hochman says:

    Doctors are going to be overworked, if not already, as the pandemic takes off. Abortion is a simple surgery, but I have heard about doctors working outside of their specialty areas in order to assist with the increase in patients. You have to remember that the virus is in addition to the things that already require hospitalization–cancer, strokes, the regular flu, car crashes, heart attack, shootings, these things didn’t take a vacation for the virus. In time, Roe v. Wade will be over turned. It is based on out dated ideas, the technology and knowledge has changed a lot since 1973, and it is not constitutional.

  4. C.L. says:

    Jason, uh…um… abortion is legal and currently protected under the Constitution, so it can’t be unconstitutional.

  5. Jason Hochman says:

    CL, it is legal based on Roe v. Wade, which, is a relic of a different time. The first guarantee in the preamble to the Constitution is LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Roe will be over turned in time.

  6. Ross says:

    Jadon, Roe is currently the law of thg he land, and it makes abortion legal and constitutional. If Roe is overturned, there will still be states that allow abortion. There will also be a surge of women dying in other states from illegal back alley abortions, just like before Roe. There will also be a surge of well off family members travelling to states where abortion is legal to have a “female procedure” at a “top doctor”, just like before Roe.

  7. C.L. says:

    Jason, the Constitution was written roughly 240 yrs ago, Roe vs. Wade is from 1973…hardly a ‘relic of a different time’.

    If killing another human being is contrary to the preamble of the Constitution, instead of calling Sylvester Turner’s office to rail again injustice(s), you should turn your attention to Greg Abbott’s office – he seems to be doing a whole lot more State-sanctioned killing than Sly.

  8. Bill Daniels says:

    “….you should turn your attention to Greg Abbott’s office – he seems to be doing a whole lot more State-sanctioned killing than Sly.”

    The people the state kills get due process, get their day in court, get appeals, etc. The people PP kills get none of that due process. I support abortion (not as fervently as the rest of you, just saying), but let’s not pretend they are the same thing.

  9. Robbie westmoreland says:

    If the preamble to the Constitution now contains the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” that would be pretty radical news. It never had those words in it before.
    I’m going to recommend that people who are going to pretend to know something about the law actually read it first.

  10. robert says:

    Bill, due process…..you’ve obviously never been to criminal court.

  11. C.L. says:

    @Robbie… Jason’s never been one for facts.

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