ABORTION BILL IN TEXAS
The legal lightning bolt came just before midnight on Wednesday
In the US state of Texas, a Republican Governor has signed a law banning abortions from the time a heartbeat can be detected - usually around six weeks and before many women know they are pregnant.
It's the strictest law against abortion rights in the US since the country's landmark Roe vs Wade decision in 1973, and part of a broader push by Republicans nationwide to impose new restrictions on abortion. The move stunned many legal observers and abortion-rights advocates, who were expecting the court to suspend the law until after the justices decided the Mississippi case.
Abortion in Texas is difficult to obtain, particularly since September 2021 due to the Texas Heartbeat Act, which abortion providers have described as a ban on abortions, as it covers abortion once "cardiac motion" in the embryo can be detected, which is earlier than most people know that they're pregnant. The new Texas act is one of the strictest abortion bans in the United States, though it is following a trend that several other states have previously attempted, and its constitutionality is a matter of legal controversy. as of 11 July 2021, 30 cities in Texas had enacted local abortion bans.
On May 19, 2021, signed the Texas Heartbeat Act, also known as Senate Bill 8 of the 87th legislature, is a heartbeat bill that outlaws abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detectable, which typically occurs in the sixth week of pregnancy. The only exception for abortions, the past six weeks, is in response to a medical emergency. The law makes no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, though they may be aborted before fetal heartbeat detection. The Texas Heartbeat Act took effect September 1, 2021, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take action. Prior to this date, elective abortions were allowed up to 20 weeks post-fertilization.
For decades, abortion has been a more powerful motivating issue for conservatives than for liberals, if only because anti-abortion activists are the ones facing a legal landscape they desperately wanted to change the Texas ruling is an indication that the court is poised to strike down Roe and allow states to ban abortion, however, that legal landscape will shift quickly and dramatically.
It will be abortion rights advocates who feel threatened - with fear frequently an effective motivating factor in getting people to the polls. With mid-term congressional elections just a year away, candidate views on abortion rights will no longer be a theoretical discussion, with the ultimate fate of the procedure decided by the courts.
Legislators in states and US Congress will be casting votes on abortion laws that have very real implications for everyday Americans - and very real electoral implications.
For decades both Republicans and Democrats have been saying "abortion is on the ballot". Some, particularly on the left, have shrugged that off, it will be hard to dispute such an assertion.
Amy Hagstrom Miller, head of Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion provider that has four clinics in Texas, said the law will have a “chilling effect.
The bill was opposed by more than 300 Texas lawyers who said it undermined long-standing rules and tenets of the legal system, including that a person must be injured to sue.
Writer - Antra Pandey
Editor and Graphic Designer - Vaishnavi Bhojane
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