Texas has approved a new anti-abortion law that gives US citizens the right to sue abortion clinics, doctors, and anyone else involved in the abortion process.
If successful, the petitioner (who does not have to be a Texas resident) could receive up to $10,000 and attorney fee expenses. However, pro-choice activists are concerned that the monetary award could foster a small market of anti-abortion bounty hunters.
The new anti-abortion law is just the beginning of a larger anti-abortion bill that restricts doctors from aborting a fetus at the six-week mark, usually when doctors discover a fetal heartbeat.
Many women are unaware that they are pregnant until they are six weeks along. A six-week limit would prevent most people from getting an abortion just two weeks after their period was missing.
Because the government isn’t the enforcing authority, abortion clinic lawyers aren’t sure how to combat the law, which is due to take effect on Sept. 1. Six-week restrictions have previously been deemed unconstitutional as they progressed through the court system in other states.
In similar situations, the government either shuts down or challenges the abortion clinics for infringing the law. The clinics then have a legal avenue to contest the state law’s validity. Clinics and doctors can no longer use this tactic since Americans have been empowered to litigate on their own behalf.
Planned Parenthood, for example, would ordinarily sue Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton before the bill is passed. Still, because he is not implementing the law, it must instead wait to be sued.
Allowing all Americans to sue might inundate clinics with claims, overwhelming their limited legal and financial resources. Even if they win the cases in the end, they will have spent a lot of time and money.
“Every citizen is now a private attorney general,” said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston.“You can have random people who are against abortion start suing tomorrow.”
Earlier this spring, over 370 Texas attorneys, including county attorneys, current and past elected officials, former judges, and law professors, sent a letter to the state legislature expressing their opposition to the bill.
The letter read: “In an attempt to avoid a constitutional challenge that the state will likely lose, these bills are drafted to remove any state actor from enforcing them, but allow ‘any person’ to use Texas state courts to enforce compliance with 28 existing regulations and the new unconstitutional ban.”
Critics believe that the bill is an “affront” to our government.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said in a statement, “By allowing anyone in the country to sue, we would be throwing open our courthouse doors to harassing and frivolous lawsuits against doctors—putting more strain on our already overburdened court system.”
Others were concerned that the bill was too broad, allowing sexual predators to benefit from their crimes.
“The bill is so extreme that it could even allow a rapist to sue a doctor for providing care to a sexual assault survivor and for the rapist to recover financial damages,” wrote Travis County attorney Delia Garza.
While the bill prohibits convicted felons from suing, abortion rights supporters argue that the statute’s wording is unclear and that the vast majority of rapes and assaults go unreported.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas defended the clause, citing his religious convictions.
“Our creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion,” Abbott said in a bill signing ceremony in May. The legislature “worked together on a bipartisan basis to pass a bill that I’m about to sign that ensures that the life of every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion.”
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