Texas restricts abortions

Six-week law in effect

Planned Parenthood clinics and others are no longer scheduling abortions beyond the six-week mark in Texas after a new state that effective bans most procedures went into effect Wednesday.

The law began at midnight after the US Supreme Court declined to act on an emergency request to block it.

The statute, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott (inset) in May, bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is usually around the sixweek mark — before many women know they’re pregnant.

Planned Parenthood, which filed the emergency request, is among the abortion clinics that have already stopped scheduling the procedures beyond that time frame.

Some clinics across the state said they had been fully booked for weeks leading up to the ban.

Employees at Houston Women’s Reproductive Services say they were working overtime in order to get to as many appointments as possible before the midnight deadline, The Washington Post reports.

The Whole Woman’s Health clinic in Fort Worth still had 27 patients in the waiting room trying to get an abortion just hours before the deadline hit.

The law essentially empowers individuals to enforce the ban because citizens can take legal action against doctors or anyone else who helps terminate a pregnancy — even those who drive a woman to

an abortion appointment past the time the heartbeat can be detected.

Citizens who win such suits under the new law may be entitled to at least $10,000.

President Biden on Wednesday slammed the law as “extreme” and a violation of rights established under the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.

In a statement, Biden said it was outrageous the law “deputizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion, which might even include family members, health-care workers, front- desk staff at a health-care clinic, or strangers with no connection to the individual.”

Pro-choice advocacy groups trying to block the law say about 90 percent of abortions in Texas occur after six weeks of pregnancy.