Texas Supreme Court blocks order that resumed abortions
AUSTIN: The Texas Supreme Court has blocked a lower court order that had allowed clinics in the state to continue performing abortions even after the US Supreme Court overturned it’s landmark 1973 ruling that confirmed a constitutional right to abortion.
It was not immediately clear whether the clinics in Texas that resumed performing abortions just days ago would halt services again following the ruling late Friday night. A hearing is scheduled for later this month.
The whiplash of Texas clinics turning away patients, rescheduling them, and now potentially canceling appointments again all in the span of a week illustrates the confusion and scrambling that has taken place across the country since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
An order by a Houston judge on Tuesday had reassured some clinics they could temporarily resume abortions up to six weeks into pregnancy.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly asked the state’s highest court, which is stocked with nine Republican justices, to temporarily put that order on hold.
These laws are confusing, unnecessary, and cruel, said Marc Hearron, attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, after the order was issued Friday night.
Clinics in Texas a state of nearly 30 million people stopped performing abortions after the US Supreme Court last week overturned Roe v. Wade. Texas had left an abortion ban on the books for the past 50 years while Roe was in place.
Attorneys for Texas clinics provided a copy of Friday’s order, which was not immediately available on the court’s website. Abortion providers and patients across the country have been struggling to navigate the evolving legal landscape around abortion laws and access.
In Florida, a law banning abortions after 15 weeks went into effect Friday, the day after a judge called it a violation of the state constitution and said he would sign an order temporarily blocking the law next week. The ban could have broader implications in the South, where Florida has wider access to the procedure than its neighbours.
Abortion rights have been lost and regained in the span of a few days in Kentucky. A so-called trigger law imposing a near-total ban on the procedure took effect last Friday, but a judge blocked the law Thursday, meaning the state’s only two abortion providers can resume seeing patients for now.
The legal wrangling is almost certain to continue to cause chaos for Americans seeking abortions in the near future, with court rulings upending access at a moment’s notice and an influx of new patients from out of state overwhelming providers.
Even when women travel outside states with abortion bans in place, they may have fewer options to end their pregnancies as the prospect of prosecution follows them.
Planned Parenthood of Montana this week stopped providing medication abortions to patients who live in states with bans to minimize potential risk for providers, health center staff, and patients in the face of a rapidly changing landscape.
Planned Parenthood North Central States, which offers the procedure in Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska, is telling its patients that they must take both pills in the regimen in a state that allows abortions.
The use of abortion pills has been the most common method to end a pregnancy since 2000, when the US Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone, the main drug used in medication abortions.