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When Samantha Casiano of East Texas found out she was pregnant with her fifth child, she was ecstatic. But at a 20-week ultrasound, she received shocking news. Her baby was diagnosed with anencephaly, a rare and fatal condition that prevents the skull and brain from fully forming. This was in December 2022, after the Texas Heartbeat Act, or Senate Bill 8, was enacted. The law bans abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected, which usually occurs after about six weeks of pregnancy. It was passed nearly nine months before the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, which...

Texas has appealed a judge’s temporary restraining order against its pre-Roe abortion ban so it can fully enforce the law and save babies from abortions. Texas was the first state to successfully ban abortions before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It’;s heartbeat law prohibited abortions after 6 weeks and included a private enforcement mechanism to avoid being overturned in court. Following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton confirmed that the state’s pre-Roe abortion ban has come into effect to ban aboritons starting at conception. However, four days after the Supreme...

"Squad" leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. ,botched the facts while attacking Texas' hotly debated abortion law in a tweet that quickly went viral among progressives. Ocasio-Cortez made the claim in a Friday tweet where she appeared to respond to Elon Musk's suggestion that the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left. "‘The extreme left is taking over’ WHERE. In Texas, Republicans passed a law allowing rapists to sue their victims for getting an abortion," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.

The Texas Supreme Court dealt a final blow to abortion providers’ federal challenge to the state’s latest abortion restrictions Friday. The court ruled that state medical licensing officials do not have authority to enforce the law, which bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. This was the last, narrowly cracked window that abortion providers had left to challenge the law after the U.S. Supreme Court decimated their case in a December ruling. The law has a unique private-enforcement mechanism that empowers private citizens to sue anyone who, in the law’s language, “aids or abets” an abortion after fetal cardiac...

The U.S. Supreme Court has not been too kind to abortion providers seeking relief from the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans most abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is at about six weeks. On Thursday, the Court rejected a request from providers who were asking that the case be sent to a federal district court. Abortion providers were asking that the case be sent to a federal district court, which had previously ruled against the law. As I reported in October, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, appointed by President Barack Obama, blocked enforced of the law with the...

section class="post-body"> The US Supreme Court handed down a long-anticipated decision called Whole Woman’s Health vs. Jackson this morning.By way of background, on September 1, S.B. 8, the so-called “heartbeat bill” went into effect in Texas. The law had some unique features. First and foremost, it outlawed abortion after the point of a detectable fetal heartbeat. This was a clear challenge to the whole inhumane sham structure of abortion jurisprudence brought into existence by Roe vs. Wade. However, the most interesting feature was creating a private right to action to enforce the law. That means anyone can bring a lawsuit...

Comments: garymichael 12/08/21 - 12:07AM If a woman wants/needs to abort a pregnancy she should be able to do it safely and quickly and without nosy neighbors trying to collect a bounty. If the Supreme Court allows an atrocity like the Texas Law then they will diminish the reputation and authority of the Supreme Court because people will ignore the Texans and just go to another state and have an abortion if it's needed. Or as this article points out, they will take an abortion pill. Doing that those same people will be thumbing their noses at the law and...

Standing in front of a judge at 17, Veronika Granado said she felt numb as she asked him to grant her a judicial bypass, which would allow her, as a minor, to get an abortion without parental consent or notification. For Granado, who had just graduated high school, terminating the pregnancy would allow her to continue her education without being a young mother at the same time. "My future was on the line," Granado said. "He could have easily said no, and that would have been devastating." Now 22 and a third-year student at the University of Texas at San...

The nation’s most restrictive abortion law remains in place for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday sided with the state of Texas. In a brief 2-1 order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit refused the Justice Department’s request to reinstate an earlier court ruling that had blocked enforcement of the Texas law, which bars the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy and makes no exceptions for rape or incest. The brief order, which is expected to be appealed the Supreme Court, was backed by Judges James C. Ho, a nominee of Donald Trump,...

A federal appeals court Friday night quickly allowed Texas to resume banning abortions after heartbeats have been detected, just one day after clinics began racing to serve patients again for the first time since early September. A one-page order by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the nation's strictest abortion law, which bans abortions once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks. It makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. "Patients are being thrown back into a state of chaos and fear," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents several...

A federal appeals court reinstated Texas’ controversial "fetal heart beat" abortion ban on Friday night, days after a lower court suspended the Republican-backed law. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay, effectively pausing U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman’s decision to grant a temporary restraining order against the abortion ban earlier this week. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, had appealed the lower court’s decision. "Great news tonight, The Fifth Circuit has granted an administrative stay on #SB8. I will fight federal overreach at every turn," Paxton wrote on Twitter after the decision. The appeals court...

Jack Posobiec @JackPosobiec ·33m BREAKING: Federal circuit court reinstates Texas heartbeat abortion ban 8:55PM • Oct 8, 2021

The past six weeks in Texas have been hellish for pregnant women seeking abortions. The decision by a federal judge in Austin on Wednesday night to pause enforcement of Texas’ ultrarestrictive anti-abortion law, S.B. 8, offered them a reprieve — if only temporary. The conservative-tilted U.S. Supreme Court is planning to hear arguments in December about a separate restrictive abortion law in Mississippi, which activists fear could lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Though the ruling in Texas is welcome, the inevitability of an appeal seeking to overturn that decision and the looming Mississippi case are casting a...

(CNN)A federal judge in Texas issued an order Wednesday blocking the state's six-week abortion ban. US District Judge Robert Pitman's order is a victory for abortion rights proponents, who had seen other attempts to block the law stymied by the ban's novel design. It may, however, be only a temporary victory. At a hearing Friday, a lawyer from the Texas attorney general's office made clear that the state would appeal such an order to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals if it were granted. That appeals court -- perhaps the most conservative in the country -- previously rejected a...

Federal Judge Rejects Joe Biden’s Emergency Demand to Block Texas Abortion BanA federal judge has blocked Joe Biden’s emergency request to stop the Texas abortion ban, which has saved anywhere between 1,500 and 2,000 babies from abortion.The Texas heartbeat law went into effect Sept. 1, prohibiting abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable, about six weeks of pregnancy. Unique from other state heartbeat laws, the Texas law includes a private enforcement mechanism that allows people to file lawsuits against abortionists who violate the law and those who help them.Pro-life leaders in the state estimate as many as 100 babies...

The Department of Justice submitted an emergency motion late Tuesday seeking a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction on Texas' ban on abortions after six weeks. The big picture: The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, allowed Texas' Senate Bill 8 to go into effect earlier this month, prompting the DOJ to file a lawsuit last week against the state's action. Attorney General Merrick Garland called the law "clearly unconstitutional." Read the emergency motion, via DocumentCloud: Read the emergency motion, via DocumentCloud:

On Sept. 3, just two days after Texas banned abortions, Vivek Bhaskaran, the chief executive of an Austin-based online survey software company, quickly assembled the handful of female employees that are based in the city. In a virtual town hall that lasted about 15 minutes, he told the women that regardless of insurance, the company would cover out-of-state abortion services. For the past several years, Texas has been selling itself as a tech haven attracting start-ups and tech companies such as Oracle, Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, and even Elon Musk, Tesla's billionaire co-founder and CEO, who has moved to the state. Big...

DALLAS, TX—As new restrictions on abortion go into effect in Texas, more and more concerned residents are speaking out about their loss of abortion access. We caught up with Dallas resident Debbie Woods to discuss the impact of the new law on her life. “I probably get four or five abortions a year, so this will definitely impact me directly,” Woods said. "I just can't have a kid right now. I’m sleeping over at a different guy’s house like five nights a week. Nobody’s going to want to hook up with me if I’ve got a baby in tow!” Woods...

The Justice Department is suing Texas over the state's new controversial restrictions on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday. Garland called the Texas law "clearly unconstitutional," and said it included an "unprecedented scheme" to insulate the state of Texas from responsibility for the law. … "The United States has the authority and responsibility to ensure that Texas cannot evade its obligations under the Constitution and deprive individuals of their constitutional rights by adopting a statutory scheme designed specifically to evade traditional mechanisms of federal judicial review," the lawsuit reads. "The federal government therefore...

Leaders of the Satanic Temple aren’t just outraged with Texas’s strict new abortion law. They say it’s also a matter of religion. “Consistent with our tenets that call for bodily autonomy and acting in accordance with best scientific evidence, The Satanic Temple, based in Salem, religiously objects to many of the restrictions that states have enacted that interfere with abortion access,” the religious group’s website says.