Roe v Wade: Pretty cool while it lasted

[beyelzu]

so I have been reading stories about Gilead er Texas and I have wanted to share them here.

I don't think we have a dedicated reproductive rights thread, sadly, given the current assault on reproductive rights, I think we need one.

After the Texas law went into effect, Alan Braid performed a newly illegal abortion.

Then, this month, everything changed. A new Texas law, known as S.B. 8, virtually banned any abortion beyond about the sixth week of pregnancy. It shut down about 80 percent of the abortion services we provide. Anyone who suspects I have violated the new law can sue me for at least $10,000. They could also sue anybody who helps a person obtain an abortion past the new limit, including, apparently, the driver who brings a patient to my clinic.

For me, it is 1972 all over again.

And that is why, on the morning of Sept. 6, I provided an abortion to a woman who, though still in her first trimester, was beyond the state’s new limit. I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.

Dr Braid explains himself in this editorial


Now he is being sued as the texas law entails.

Since the Texas ban took effect Sept. 1, advocates on both sides of the abortion debate have been anticipating such lawsuits, though perhaps not from a “disbarred and disgraced former Arkansas lawyer,” as Oscar Stilley described himself in his complaint.

funnily enough

Texas Right to Life, an antiabortion group, quickly disavowed the lawsuits as “self-serving legal stunts.”

“We believe Braid published his op-ed intending to attract imprudent lawsuits, but none came from the Pro-Life movement,” John Seago, the organization’s legislative director, said in a statement. “Texas Right to Life is resolute in ensuring the Texas Heartbeat Act is fully enforced.”

that sounds odd, but

Melissa Murray, a professor at New York University School of Law, said lawsuits like the one Stilley filed on Monday were “never the principal goal” of the Texas law. The main point, she said, was to avoid a preemptive legal challenge and to “absolutely bring reproductive care in Texas to a standstill. That was always the endgame.”

Braid being sued by a convicted felon attorney in Arkansas