Abortion laws causing confusion
Texas court blocks order that allowed procedure
AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Supreme Court has blocked a lower court order that had allowed clinics in the state to continue performing abortions even after the U.S. 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.
Clinics in Texas – a state of nearly 30 million people – stopped performing abortions after the U.S. 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.
Abortion providers and patients have been struggling to navigate the evolving legal landscape around abortion laws and access across the country since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
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.
In Kentucky, a so-called trigger law imposing a near-total ban on the procedure took effect upon the Supreme Court’s ruling, 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 able to upend access at a moment’s notice and an influx of new patients from out of state overwhelming providers.
Even when patients travel outside states with abortion bans in place, they might have fewer options to end their pregnancies as the prospect of prosecution follows them.
Planned Parenthood of Montana 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 U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone – the main drug used in medication abortions. Taken with misoprostol, a drug that causes cramping that empties the womb, it constitutes the abortion pill.
Access to the pills has become a key fight in abortion rights, with the Biden administration preparing to argue states can’t ban a medication that has received FDA approval.
A South Dakota law took effect Friday that threatens a felony punishment for anyone who prescribes medication for an abortion without a license from the South Dakota Board of Medical and Osteopathic Examiners.
Republican Gov. Kristi Noem said in a statement that “doctors who knowingly break the law and prescribe these medications to end a human life will be prosecuted.”
Yellowhammer Fund, an Alabamabased group that helps low-income women cover abortion and travel costs, said it is pausing operation for two weeks because of the lack of clarity under state law.
“This is a temporary pause, and we’re going to figure out how we can legally get you money and resources,” said Kelsea McLain, Yellowhammer’s health care access director.