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The Supreme Court rejected on Thursday a request from the suppliers of abortion services of Texas to immediately submit your case against the strict abortion law of that state to a lower court.
Doing so would likely have allowed abortion providers and advocates to more quickly proceed with their case against the law, which bans most abortions in Texas after six weeks of pregnancy. Instead, the Supreme Court ruling is likely to prolong the legal battle.
The high court cited by the plaintiffs said in December that it could proceed a lawsuit against the ban, while the law remains in force,
With this decision on Thursday, the US Supreme Court re-enforced the almost total veto on abortion in Texas, which contains no exceptions for cases of incest or rape and that promises to continue in force for months, given the refusal of the courts to stop it.
For the third time in the last six months, the Supreme Court refused to stop the implementation of the controversial Texas law, which prohibits abortion from six weeks of gestation, when many women do not know they are pregnant, and which contradicts the precedent set by the highest court in 1973.
The six conservative judges of the c The court was united in its decision not to act in the case, while the three progressive magistrates expressed their disagreement.
“This case is a disaster for the rule of law and is a serious detriment to women in Texas”, wrote the progressive judge Sonia Sotomayor,
who promised that she will not remain “silent while a state continues to annul the constitutional guarantee” which is the right to abortion.
The Supreme Court already allowed the Texas veto to continue just after it went into effect in September and returned to do so in December, when he returned the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative in the country.
This Monday, a That court’s panel decided to ask the Texas Supreme Court to interpret the constitutionality of the veto, a process that promises to take months.
To prevent the controversial law from remaining in force in Texas during that period, groups that defend the right to abort sent an urgent petition to the Supreme Court, in the hope that this court would annul the decision of the court of appeals.
The goal of these groups was for the Supreme Court to remand the case to a lower federal court that already temporarily blocked the veto in October.
“People in Texas are still forced to leave the state to get essential health care, if they can, or remain pregnant against their will. This is inhumane”, said in a statement Alexis McGill Johnson , president of Planned Parenthood, the largest network US Reproductive Health Clinics
Texas law allows individuals to file civil lawsuits against anyone who helps a pregnant woman have an abortion if they believe they are violating the ban, and offers damages of up to 10.000 dollars to each plaintiff per trial won.
The Supreme Court plans to decide in the middle of this year if it maintains the legal precedent set by that same court in 1973, known like “Roe versus Wade”, which guaranteed legal abortion in the US until around 24 weeks.
If the Supreme Court repeals “Roe versus Wade”, each state of the country would be free of pr prohibit or allow abortion at will, and it is expected that, in that case, more than half of the states in the country will take measures to veto it.
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