Justice Department Sues Texas Over New Abortion Law (lawyers, party, government)
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The Texas AG's response is that he plans to use every available resource in TX to defend the state of TX from the Feds.
Meanwhile, right to life groups estimate they are saving the lives of up to 200 babies a day by denying abortions to women who don't want them as long as this law stands.
If true, that's about 1400 unwanted children a week who are likely to become the financial responsibility of the state of Texas in some degree or another.
If this law is found unconstitutional, wonder if women forced into motherhood by Texas will be able to sue for damages to the tune of what it costs to raise a child. Will the children themselves have standing to sue? Interesting questions ahead.
If this law is found unconstitutional, wonder if women forced into motherhood by Texas will be able to sue for damages to the tune of what it costs to raise a child. Will the children themselves have standing to sue? Interesting questions ahead.
No, sovereign immunity would apply. It is very hard to get any damages from a government entity, usually only in egregious cases where the government failed to operate how it should. The most common are where someone has been imprisoned for years and later found to have been innocent - that kind of thing. There is 0% chance women or their offspring will be able to collect damages from the government for this.
This law is rather chilling - not only as an end-run around roe v wade, but also by, frankly, creating a society of snitches, if you will. This is basically almost like the Snitches Get Riches mask reporting in California. It’s ridiculous, and if it stands, the precedent is horrifying. It may now work in your interests if you’re an anti-abortion advocate, but sooner or later it will be used to take away something or other that’s near and dear to you (I already heard guns, but it could literally be anything). Nor am I terribly interested in living in a snitch culture. Do you really want to be reporting to the Ministry of Truth office near you? This is the kind of culture it tees up.
+1. And with no exceptions in rape cases, I doubt this ridiculous law will remain in place long. The irony is Mexico just decriminalized abortion. I imagine many women will travel there for the procedure.
Much of the population isn’t that close to Mexico. Texas is huge. Much easier/faster/closer to travel to a neighboring state...should they wish to risk it.
Probably so on the Mexico travel. But, women should not have to go to a foreign country to get medical care when it is their right under the law of their own country.
No, sovereign immunity would apply. It is very hard to get any damages from a government entity, usually only in egregious cases where the government failed to operate how it should. The most common are where someone has been imprisoned for years and later found to have been innocent - that kind of thing. There is 0% chance women or their offspring will be able to collect damages from the government for this.
Not so sure about that.
Sovereign immunity doesn't apply when someone's civil rights have been violated.
This law is rather chilling - not only as an end-run around roe v wade, but also by, frankly, creating a society of snitches, if you will. This is basically almost like the Snitches Get Riches mask reporting in California. It’s ridiculous, and if it stands, the precedent is horrifying. It may now work in your interests if you’re an anti-abortion advocate, but sooner or later it will be used to take away something or other that’s near and dear to you (I already heard guns, but it could literally be anything). Nor am I terribly interested in living in a snitch culture. Do you really want to be reporting to the Ministry of Truth office near you? This is the kind of culture it tees up.
Yeah. And, while judges should be ruling on the law and not their emotions, I would think this deliberate thumbing of the nose TX is directing towards the judiciary would be more than a little infuriating to many judges on both sides of the aisle.
Texas reverting back to the ugliness of women having back alley abortions again is unbelievable and just sickening. There will always be abortion no matter what. It's been around since ancient times.
+1. And with no exceptions in rape cases, I doubt this ridiculous law will remain in place long. The irony is Mexico just decriminalized abortion. I imagine many women will travel there for the procedure.
If Roe v Wade is overruled, then state abortion ban laws may last indefinitely as long as women have easy access to Plan B and other drugs, thereby preventing a bunch of horror stories coming out about what happened to the women who couldn't get legal abortions. If horror stories come out, anyway, concerned citizens better do whatever it takes to get such laws repealed. In some red states, such as Oklahoma, it's just a matter of getting enough signatures for a petition for a vote on repeal.
Last edited by StillwaterTownie; 09-12-2021 at 11:40 PM..
Yeah. And, while judges should be ruling on the law and not their emotions, I would think this deliberate thumbing of the nose TX is directing towards the judiciary would be more than a little infuriating to many judges on both sides of the aisle.
I wouldn’t call it a deliberate thumbing of the nose so much as a subversion via letter of the law. The state is basically saying, we can’t enforce it, so we’ll let snitches sue.
I don’t have a good handle on SCOTUS law, so I don’t know how they’d rule on this. But given that SCOTUS is very astute in taking into account what their precedents might mean, in addition to the immediate case before them, I tend to think this won’t survive judicial scrutiny. If it does, conservatives will certainly reap what they’ve sown in fairly short order, and make everybody of every political stripe pretty miserable within the next decade.
And in that scenario, I wonder why I’ve been avoiding moving to NY state for so long. Yeah, I hate the weather more than here in Texas, but if we are about to enter a phase of legislation-come-private-lawsuit, what state you live in will suddenly look a lot more fungible when nobody is really able to get what they’d like.
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