This is another setback for the right to abortion in the US state of Texas as a particularly restrictive law came into force, Wednesday 1er September, in the absence of a US Supreme Court ruling on an urgent appeal.
As the high court – with a conservative majority, with six conservative magistrates out of nine – is not required to rule before the entry into force of a law, Texas has thus become one of the most restrictive states. in terms of abortion. The legislation thus prohibits any termination of pregnancy as soon as the fetal heartbeat is noticeable, i.e. from about the sixth week of pregnancy. At this stage, many women are still unaware that they are pregnant.
This law, signed in May by the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, therefore makes the vast majority of abortions illegal – even in cases of incest or rape – in this conservative southern state where, according to planning organizations family, more than 85% of women abort after six weeks of pregnancy.
Criterion of “fetal viability”
Several organizations defending women’s right to abortion had urgently seized the Supreme Court on Monday to ask it to block the entry into force of the text or to force the federal courts to do so. Appeal to which it has not yet responded.
Before Texas, twelve states passed laws to ban abortions as soon as a fetal heartbeat is noticeable. These laws have all been invalidated in court, due to the fact that they violate the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, which has recognized a right to abortion as long as the fetus is not viable, i.e. up to twenty-two and twenty-four weeks of pregnancy.
But Texas worded its law differently. Thus, it is not up to the authorities to enforce the measure, but “Exclusively” to citizens, encouraged to bring a civil complaint against organizations or people who help women to have abortions. The text provides that citizens who initiate proceedings will receive a minimum of 10,000 dollars (a little less than 8,500 euros). “Compensation” in case of conviction.
Another restrictive law examined in Mississippi
Critics of the text see it as a “Prime” denouncing, but its defenders have already made forms available on the Internet to file “Anonymous information”. For procedural reasons, this device makes it more difficult for the federal courts to intervene, which have so far refused to take action against the law.
The entry to the Supreme Court of three judges appointed by Republican Donald Trump, predecessor of the current President of the United States, Joe Biden, galvanized opponents of abortion: they compete in imagination to provide the upper opportunity to revisit its historic 1973 judgment, Roe vs Wade, having recognized the right of women to have an abortion. The Supreme Court is due in the fall to consider a Mississippi law that prohibits most abortions after the fifteenth week of pregnancy. It could take the opportunity to begin to unravel its case law by returning to the criterion of “Fetal viability” posed so far.