Texas doctor who defied state’s new abortion ban is sued
A San Antonio doctor who said he performed an abortion in defiance of a new Texas law all but dared supporters of the state’s near-total ban on the procedure to try making an early example of him by filing a lawsuit — and by Monday, two people obliged.
Former attorneys in Arkansas and Illinois filed separate state lawsuits Monday against Dr. Alan Braid, who in a weekend Washington Post opinion column became the first Texas abortion provider to publicly reveal he violated the law that took effect on Sept. 1.
They both came in ahead of the state’s largest anti-abortion group, which said it was looking into the matter. Neither ex-lawyer who filed suit said they were anti-abortion. But both said courts should weigh in.
The Texas law prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, which is usually around six weeks and before some women know they are pregnant.
Prosecutors cannot take criminal action against Braid, because the law explicitly forbids that. The only way the ban can be enforced is through lawsuits brought by private citizens, who are entitled to claim at least $10,000 in damages if successful.
Oscar Stilley, who described himself in court paperwork as a former lawyer who lost his law license after being convicted of tax fraud in 2010, said he is not opposed to abortion but sued to force a court review of Texas’ anti-abortion law, which he called an “end-run.”
“I don’t want doctors out there nervous and sitting there and quaking in their boots and saying, ‘I can’t do this because if this thing works out, then I’m going to be bankrupt,’ ” Stilley, of Cedarville, Arkansas, near the Oklahoma border, told The Associated Press.
Felipe Gomez, of Chicago, asked a court in San Antonio in his lawsuit to declare the new law unconstitutional. In his view, the law is a form of government overreach. He said his lawsuit is a way to hold the Republicans who run Texas accountable, adding that their lax response to public health during the COVID19 pandemic conflicts with their crack down on abortion rights.
Climate change: Pressure keeps building on increasingly anxious world leaders to ratchet up efforts to fight climate change, and officials report slight but vague signs of encouragement from ongoing talks at the United Nations.
For the second time in four days, this time out of U.N. headquarters in New York, leaders heard pleas Monday to make deeper cuts of emissions of heat-trapping gases and give poorer countries more money to develop cleaner energy and adapt to the worsening impacts of global climate change.
In a private session of more than two hours, about 40 of the world’s leaders provided “encouraging declarations” on the money end, but “there is still a long way to go” on emission cuts, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters afterward. He gave no specifics.
President Joe Biden will address the issue and U.S. obligations when he goes to the United Nations on Tuesday, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the president’s remarks. Western wildfires: Four famous giant sequoias were not harmed by a wildfire that reached the edge of Giant Forest in California’s Sequoia National Park, authorities said.
The Four Guardsmen, a group of trees that form a natural entryway on the road to the forest, were successfully protected from the KNP Complex fire by the removal of nearby vegetation and by wrapping fire-resistant material around the bases of the trees, the firefighting management team said in a statement Sunday.
The KNP Complex began as two lightning-sparked fires that eventually merged and has scorched more than 37 square miles in the heart of sequoia country on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.
Sequoias have adapted to fire and can benefit if the flames are low intensity.
Virus tests in NYC schools: New York City will begin conducting weekly, random COVID-19 tests of unvaccinated students in the nation’s largest school district in an attempt to more quickly spot outbreaks in classrooms.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made the announcement Monday after the city’s teachers’ union sent de Blasio a letter calling for weekly testing instead of biweekly testing in the district with about 1 million students.
The mayor also announced also a change in quarantine rules for schools, no longer requiring unvaccinated students to quarantine at home if they were masked and at least 3 feet away from someone who tested positive for the coronavirus.
De Blasio said the changes followed U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and would keep students from missing vital classroom time.
The changes come after the first full week of the school year in which nearly 900 classrooms, including those in charter schools, were fully or partially closed in the city’s 1,876 schools because of reports positive COVID-19 cases. One school closed entirely for 10 days after a cluster of cases. The new rules take effect on Monday.
Police officer killed: A Houston police officer was killed and another was wounded Monday morning during a shooting that also killed a 31-year-old man whom the officers were attempting to arrest on drug charges, authorities said.
The veteran officers were each shot multiple times while attempting to serve an arrest warrant at an apartment complex on the city’s northeast side, Mayor Sylvester Turner said.
Senior Officer William Jeffrey, who joined the Houston Police Department in 1990, was pronounced dead at a hospital following the shooting, authorities said. He was 54. Sgt. Charles Vance, who joined the department in 1998, was in stable condition, according to police Chief Troy Finner. Vance is 49. NKorea rips US: North Korea has criticized a U.S. decision to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia and threatened unspecified countermeasures if it finds the deal affects its security.
State media on Monday published comments from an unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry official who called the arrangement between U.S., Britain and Australia an “extremely” dangerous move that would destroy the security balance in the Asia-Pacific. The official said it would set off a nuclear arms race.
The official said the North was closely examining the deal and would proceed accordingly if it has “even a little adverse impact on the security of our country.”