Tuesday’s implementation of the state’s pre-Roe abortion ban was temporarily halted by a court in Harris County, Texas.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had filed a lawsuit, claiming that an abortion prohibition dated before 1973 was “repealed and unenforceable,” and the judge had issued an order in response.
For the time being, the temporary restraining order permits abortions in the Lone Star State up to six weeks into a pregnancy. The injunction is in effect until a hearing on July 12, at which point the court will determine whether to terminate it.
The state’s “trigger statute,” which was approved by the legislature and stated that abortion would become unlawful following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, is unaffected by the decision about the 1925 pre-Roe ban.
In anticipation of the supreme court’s ruling, a trigger law was approved in 2021, and it will go into effect in about two months.
According to the pre-Roe ban, people who conduct abortion procedures face prison sentences ranging from two to five years. Although Texas stopped enforcing the law after Roe v. Wade authorized abortions up to around 20 weeks, the law had never been removed off the books.
Last Thursday, Attorney General Ken Paxton outlined how the law required that abortions be outlawed 30 days following the Supreme Court’s Roe decision. Even though the court delivered its ruling on Friday, it won’t be official for another 25 days.
When the state began implementing the almost century-old pre-Roe ban prohibiting nearly all abortions, which the ACLU and two abortion clinics sought to overturn, Paxton stated that doctors might still face criminal prosecution.
Texas approved a bill outlawing abortions after six weeks in 2021 in an effort to avoid judicial problems by requiring private persons to bring lawsuits against those who assist and abet women in getting abortions.
There are only two situations in which the so-called trigger restriction on abortions at any stage of pregnancy is lifted: saving the mother’s life or preventing “severe impairment of major physiological function.”
Women who have abortions won’t be arrested after the trigger ban goes into force, but anyone who assists a woman in getting one might. Doctors who perform abortions risk up to $100,000 in fines or life in jail.
Last Friday, the court ruled 5-4 to overrule the Roe v. Wade landmark judgment legalizing abortion and 6-3 to allow a Mississippi ban on abortions at 15 weeks to go into force.
A restriction on abortions at around six weeks of gestation went into effect in Tennessee, however, after the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals removed a stay on it in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
A ban on abortions at 15 weeks was announced by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin on Friday.
With the landmark decision reversed, abortion would be illegal in 13 states that have trigger laws within 30 days. Without Roe, laws in other states that have been stopped or overturned will likely go into effect.