WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court of Texas (USA) restored last night a law of 1925 that prohibits abortion and that the state attorney general had ordered implemented after the federal Supreme Court ended the protection of abortion.
The ruling of the Supreme Court of Texas only temporarily restores the law while a final decision is reached.
In practice, what the court did was to block the ruling of a lower court that had prevented the entry into force of the law at the request of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and the Union for Civil Liberties in America (ACLU), representing clinics that perform abortions.
The law of 1925 establishes a sentence of up to five years in prison for those doctors who help a woman to interrupt her pregnancy. The legislation prohibits abortion in the event of incest or rape and only establishes an exception in the event that the life of the mother is in danger.
This law entered into force before, in 1973, the Supreme Court established that the states could not interfere in a woman’s decision about her pregnancy in the ruling “Roe v. Wade”.
Last week the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, reversed “Roe v. Wade” which ended federal protection for abortion and gave states permission to set their own rules.
Automatically, states like Texas began to implement the so-called “zombie laws” that had been proclaimed before the Supreme Court guaranteed the right to abortion in 1973, while other states activated “spring laws” so called because they were designed to come into force just when the right to abortion was repealed.
Specifically , Texas Attorney General , Republican Ken Paxton, ordered all Texas prosecutors to criminally prosecute any doctor who helps a woman terminate her pregnancy.
When a lower court blocked his order on Tuesday, Paxton appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.
Texas, one of the states with the greatest restrictions on abortion, had two laws at its disposal when the Supreme Court issued its ruling: the law of 1925 which has now been blocked and another that currently prohibits abortion up to six weeks of pregnancy, when many women do not even know they are pregnant.
“These laws are confusing, unnecessary and cruel,” said in a statement the attorney Marc Hearron, of the Center for Reproductive Rights, when the Supreme Court issued its ruling on Friday night.
On the ground, the situation in Texas is one of confusion as both patients and doctors they don’t know what rules it is are in force or not.
Abortion is currently illegal in seven of the 50 US states: Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.
Arizona, Kentucky, Louisiana and Utah had also announced their intention to ban abortion, but the courts blocked the implementation of the laws that prohibit this right.
The Planned Parenthood organization, which manages the largest network of reproductive health clinics in the US, estimates that 26 states will end up banning the right to abortion, in a matter of days, weeks or months.