Texas Governor Greg Abbott is appealing this decision, but I think it bears mentioning that he and the anti-abortionists can’t win. They can’t win because they can’t prove what they believe.
Even the 20 week ban will fail, because they can’t prove an overriding interest of the state in setting the ban at 20 weeks, and they can’t prove that the unborn represent human life (separate and unique) thereby worthy of protection by the state over the life or welfare of the mother.
The 20 week line was put in the bill specifically to challenge Roe, but there isn’t a single shred of scientific or medical evidence that has been revealed in the intervening years of research that shows that the unborn actually are alive as in human life and not simply alive as in living tissue which isn’t human life and therefore can’t be murdered. (If tissue is alive and killing it is murder, then having a wart removed is committing murder. This isn’t a strawman argument. You have to prove that the fetus is a person for it to be legally considered human life. You can’t just believe it, you have to prove it. -ed.)
Consequently if the law makes it to the SCOTUS, the 5 Catholic men will try to wiggle their way into reversing Roe somehow, but will be unable to find their way there, because there isn’t a place to go to that makes more sense than Roe did. That is the crying shame of it all. Not that I want Roe reversed (I don’t) but that there isn’t a clearer picture to be had of the issue itself than what we already have.
They can’t even prove that the mystical “ambulatory care centers” (a group run by a relative of the governors) represents an improvement in care for the women seeking service; since the goal is to end abortion, not improve service.
So Abbot may appeal, he won’t be around to see the case to its end. If Democrats win in Texas this year or in the next few years, the case will be dropped, because they don’t like the law in the first place.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel of Austin ruled that the regulation, requiring all abortion clinics to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers, posed an impermissible burden on “on women throughout Texas.”
The surgical center regulation would have left no abortion clinics operating south or west of San Antonio. Seven abortion clinics are licensed as ambulatory surgical centers — with an eighth under construction — in the state’s four largest metropolitan areas — Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Yeakel also struck down another regulation, requiring abortion doctors to gain admitting privileges in a nearby hospital, ruling that it also placed an undue burden on women. Many hospitals have declined to grant privileges, and about half of the state’s abortion clinics have had to close as a result, abortion providers have testified.
statesman.com via the Wayback Machine
Don’t want to waste money on these lawsuits? Vote Democratic.
Postscript
The SCOTUS also ruled the law unconstitutional, and in 2020 the SCOTUS ruled an identical law from Louisiana unconstitutional as well. Face it people. You can’t just believe something is real without proof. Not in court.
That didn’t ultimately stop them from overturning Roe.
