Epiphanies 2021: Abortion thread - (started as Texas Abortion Law thread)
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
I'm struggling to make sense of this. Not only does the new law prevent abortion before 6 weeks, but seems to provide rewards for those who inform on the woman. Am I reading this right? A bounty system?
Comments
The Texas Heartbeat Act, which took effect September 1, bans abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy; lots of people don't even know they're pregnant at this point. It authorizes anyone -- absolutely anyone -- to sue someone involved in helping a woman obtain a post-6-week abortion and collect a $10,000 fine from them. So someone who thinks their neighbor got an abortion could sue the doctor, the nurse, the receptionist, and the person who drove the woman to the appointment, and collect $10,000 from each of them if they win. There is no exception for rape.
This law has no governmental enforcement mechanism; it deputizes private citizens to enforce it in civil court, which as best anyone can tell means no one can challenge it until they've been sued. Normally if you think a state law is unconstitutional you file a lawsuit against the state to prevent it from being enforced, but the state is technically not acting in this case. The law is written this way to evade federal review.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week blocked a judge in Austin from holding a hearing on the law. Abortion rights activists filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, and last night the court in a 5-4 decision refused to block the law from being implemented. The majority opinion was not signed. (Cowards.) Chief Justice Roberts sided with the three liberal justices, and each of them wrote a separate dissent. Sotomayor's is scathing.
So a law which effectively voids Roe v. Wade will stand in Texas while this is played out in court and women who want abortions either drive hundreds of miles to get them or don't get them. Abortion providers in Texas have stopped giving abortions in order to avoid getting sued, so women in Texas could be waiting around for some time while this all plays out. Apparently there won't be any hearings about the constitutionality of this law until someone gets sued.
The silver lining I can see is that abortion will now be a major issue in the 2022 midterm elections, one that Democrats can push hard. Republicans since the Reagan era have campaigned successfully on platforms against abortion, but the plan used to be not to really get rid of abortion, because then they would have gotten rid of their issue. Now they're really getting rid of abortion, and I wonder if this might not bite them in the ass. There are plenty of white Republican women who have had abortions after 6 weeks.
Apparently it's even worse than that. While the woman can't be sued, anyone who had anything to do with assisting her in getting it (I saw that this included cabbies who may have given her a ride to the abortion center) can be sued. And they can be sued multiple times -- everyone in Texas can file a suit, and each suit must be defended separately. If the one(s) suing lose(s), they cannot be forced to pay the legal expenses of the person who was sued. This seems like such a foul piece of legislation that it must be unlawful on a variety of grounds. But our execrable SCOTUS decided 5-4 not to hear the case.
And I agree about the potential silver lining.
While this all plays out, no silver lining at all for pregnant women in Texas who need abortions.
Sure, and for other things too -- the bakeries who won't serve gay people, the barber shop that turned away a trans man, companies that don't provide sick leave so people can take paid time off if the covid vaccine makes them feel ill ... I can think of a lot of people I'd like to sue for $10,000 because their morals are fucked up.
If there are things you want to say that don't fit the Epiphanies guidelines, to help protect the more vulnerable on issues like abortion, I suggest Hell (I'm surprised this topic isn't there already).
Alan
Locum Purgatory host
But I'm completely bemused as to how the idea of authorizing third parties - any old random citizen - to sue for damages where they have no connection to the abortion at all has even the vaguest semblance of legality.
ETA: Agreeing with @Ruth, @NOprophet_NØprofit, and others, of course, that in the interim, a large number of vulnerable women get screwed over. But we know that the people who proposed and passed this law don't care about actual people.
...but only the first person who sues. If you've lost $10,000 to the first parasite because of your "participation" in an abortion as described here, you can't be sued for more money by additional parasites.
I thought that, but Roe vs. Wade isn't an amendment to the constitution is it. It's a non-absolute ruling of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment providing a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose. So no chance.
Is this aimed at casual sex?
The one night affair rather than a longer relationship?
As my Californian cousin puts it, people from Texas are something else...
Actually, I doubt very much that Democrats will go this road any time soon. People are just pointing out that they could, and that Republicans should think about that before pulling this kind of shit.
Of course Roe v. Wade (which Justice Kavanugh in his Senate hearings called “super-precedent”*) isn’t an amendment to the Constitution. It’s a case, but it’s a case that interprets and applies the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Any case arising out of a private cause of action regarding some gun law similar to the Texas abortion law would be a case that interprets and applies the Second Amendment to the Constitution. And it would have to do so in light of any precedent holding that the new Texas law is constitutional because it doesn’t involve government enforcement.
I’ll be very surprised if the members of SCOTUS aren’t bearing the potential consequences like this in mind as they try to figure out how to deal with the Texas law.
This law will result in people harming and potentially killing themselves trying to terminate their pregnancies.
Because you're a hateful person who doesn't think that $10,000 is enough to out yourself as a hateful person to your neighbor who had an abortion?
I agree that this will likely not play well in the moderate suburbs that swung toward Democrats in Congress in 2018 and towards Biden in 2020. The anti-abortion movement does not care and wants to get Roe overturned or neutered as quickly as possible - possibly acknowledging that demographic change and the inevitable political backlash to harsh restrictions on abortion are giving them a limited window in which to act to they are trying to get all they can. Basically, they want Roe out of the way so the issue can be left up to the states, and then states that either vote overwhelmingly Republican or that are heavily gerrymandered in Republicans favor can pass the abortion restrictions they want - maybe even change their state constitutions to make it hard to liberalize abortion in the future in those states.
And cynical GOP politicians who themselves may not be very strongly anti-abortion when you talk to them in private might figure that if abortion is left up to the states the strongest opposition to anti-abortion laws will be in Blue states that will rapidly codify Roe into law at the state level if they have not done so already. But even they know that white moderate professionals in suburbs of cities like Dallas, Houson, Austin, etc., will be very unhappy with this 6-week law. I think that maybe in the long term they are hoping as Texas becomes more and more diverse, socially conservative immigrants will reduce the backlash against the GOP for passing these laws. If Roe is out of the way and the new status quo in Texas is harsh limits on abortion, and if Democrats therefore become the party in Texas associated with liberalizing abortion, Republicans might convince socially conservative immigrants and their children who are have just gotten citizenship or turned 18 to start voting for them, and studies have shown that voting preferences set in the first couple of elections that someone participates in tend to stick for a long time if not for life.
It's aimed at punishing women for having sex, with the broader goal of keeping them barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen where they can be controlled by their male guardian.
Although I suppose the cage will be gilded.
Truly this chills me.
Technically it provides rewards for informing on anyone involved in an abortion other than the woman. The doctor who performs the abortion, the janitor who sweeps up the clinic, the cabbie (or boyfriend) who drove her there, the delivery guy who dropped off the package with the mifepristone in it are all potentially liable, but not the woman who actually got the abortion. This comes from the certainty of the American anti-choice movement that women do not possess the mental wherewithal to be considered competent moral actors (unless they're doctors, janitors, cabbies, couriers, etc.)
Can you get a morning after pill or is that banned there? (Available from any pharmacy here)
Pretty sure that constitutional rights (Roe established that terminating an early-term pregnancy is protected under the Fourteenth Amendment) aren't supposed to be subjected to majority vote.
I'd like to say that the morning after pill is a form of contraception, not abortion, but that's a distinction that's probably lost on Texas legislators.
Are women who have miscarried likely to find themselves reported by someone hoping to gain $10,000?
Once upon a time in my jurisdiction concealing a pregnancy was a criminal (potentially capital?) offence (@Marsupial?) because it was presumed that concealing a pregnancy was with the goal of terminating it. I recall reading a case in which an unfortunate servant found herself pregnant by the son of the man of the house, and sought to conceal the pregnancy, but was betrayed by another servant who had multiple complaints against pregnant woman. (The servant who betrayed the woman was quite a piece of work, it was revealed in testimony.) There was no cash reward, just the satisfaction of screwing over someone she disliked, but that was more than adequate to destroy someone's life. I've always been of the instinct that a law that in substance or enforcement relies on our ignobility is a bad law.
As @Ruth said above, the SCOTUS was cowardly in issuing an unsigned decision not to block. The Texan legislators who voted for this law are mischievous and cowardly in passing a law that deputises the citizens to carry execute the law which aims at everyone around the woman in question except for the woman herself - thereby washing their hands of the constitutional implications and of the nastiness of the law. Anyone who carries out this civil action is not cowardly per se, but is actively profiting from an individual's misfortune and will, I have faith, get the just deserts at some level of existence.
Obviously you couldn't be bothered to look at opinion polling in Texas.
It won't. Women with means will go out of state for abortions. Everyone else will either bear children they don't want and in some cases can't afford or will seek illegal abortions. Black women and other women of color are over-represented in the latter group.
The rich can fly out of state (or out of country) to avoid any surcharge (beyond air fare). The poor won’t have any access to abortion since no one will be willing to provide one because of the $10,000 minimum* penalty, plus legal fees. A particularly unsympathetic judge could bump the penalty to $20,000, or $50,000, or $18 million.
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*“Fun” fact: defendants who prevail in court are not automatically entitled to recoup their legal fees from unsuccessful plaintiffs, unlike successful plaintiffs who get their legal fees automatically paid by those they sue successfully.
Jesus told them to.
Because in their minds it's Those Women, Over There who are The Problem. Some of it is even from women.
This.
And what can stop this handmaid's tale?
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It's kinda the equivalent of "Yes, pagan tribesmen in Africa who never heard of Jesus are gonna burn in Hell, but don't worry, little babies who die before they were old enough to understand anything will still be saved."
Because everyone likes the idea of foreigner weirdos burning in Hell, but is horrifed at the thought that they're beautiful little granddaughter who fell out the window last year might suffer the same fate.
This is not subverting the system. It doesn't stop anyone from filing a lawsuit. It's just making it a bit more difficult for one anti-women group to collect possible leads. No abortion provider is going to perform an illegal abortion until and unless they are prepared to defend one of these suits, and since SCOTUS refused to intervene, this is just going to have to play out in civil court. Spamming that site is fun, but it accomplishes nothing.
Yep. Pregnancy as a punishment (and therefore deterrent) for promiscuity. Abortion removes that punishment, therefore must be opposed. Nothing to do with the babies at all.
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