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A majority of the Supreme Court of the United States appeared on Monday ready to block a Texas law which, for two months, has drastically limited the right of Texans to terminate their pregnancies. The Nine Wise Men debate the legal mechanism created by the state.
Signs with irreconcilable messages – “Abortion is essential” or “Let their hearts beat” – were waved in front of the United States Supreme Court on Monday 1is November ; Abortion advocates and opponents gathered outside the seat of the high court in Washington for a long-awaited hearing.
A majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared inclined to block a Texas law that represents the biggest blow to abortion rights in nearly 50 years. In the white marble building, the Nine Wise Men did not discuss this right but only the legal mechanism created by Texas.
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In an emergency hearing, two Conservative judges, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, both appointed by former President Donald Trump, expressed skepticism about the law’s novel architecture, which should do switch the majority.
Conservative Brett Kavanaugh, who let the law go into effect in September, this time worried “about the implications for other constitutional rights.” Could there be “a law which would make it possible to claim millions of dollars from anyone who sells an AR-15 rifle?”, He asked in particular.
Her colleague, Amy Coney Barrett, for her part, stressed that the law could not be blocked at the level of state courts, countering the flagship argument of other conservatives who seemed to want to rely on local justice.
Ironically on “the genius” who invented this device, the progressive judge Elena Kagan said “not to understand” how her colleagues could have said “we never saw that, so we can not do anything”.
A heartwarming audience
“The judges seemed to recognize that the position of Texas is extreme and threatens the foundations of our constitutional democracy,” commented after the hearing Marc Hearron, lawyer for the organization Whole Woman’s Health which operates four clinics practicing pregnancy terminations in Canada. Texas.
“We are comforted by the vigorous questions posed today,” added Julie Murray, lawyer for Planned Parenthood. “But the reality on the ground (…) is that the patients continue to suffer.”
Since 1is September, abortion is prohibited in Texas when the embryo’s heartbeat is noticeable, that is, after six weeks of pregnancy, even in cases of incest or rape.
A dozen other conservative states have adopted comparable laws, but they have all been struck down in court because they violate Supreme Court jurisprudence. This recognized in 1973 the right of women to have an abortion and specified in 1992 that it applies as long as the fetus is not viable outside the womb, ie around 22 weeks of pregnancy.
A long battle to follow
Texas, a real laboratory of the most conservative ideas, has however devised an exceptional device that complicates the intervention of the federal justice.
Its law entrusts citizens “exclusively” with the task of enforcing this prohibition, by encouraging them to take civil action against people and organizations that help women to have abortions beyond six weeks. In case of victory in court, these citizens will obtain 10,000 dollars in compensation, the law provides. Its detractors see it as a “bonus for denouncing”.
Seized urgently for the first time two months ago, the Supreme Court took refuge behind these “new procedural questions” to refuse to intervene.
His inaction, seen as a sign of the influence of the three magistrates appointed by Donald Trump, had been strongly criticized on the left, Democratic President Joe Biden lambasting a decision that “insults the rule of law”.
The legal battle then intensified, forcing the Supreme Court to fully seize the case. His decision, which could freeze the law on its own or send the case back to a lower court, is expected to be released fairly quickly.
Whatever it is, the battle will not be over: the high court must consider the 1is December a Mississippi law that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. For observers, it could take advantage of this more classic text to begin to unravel its jurisprudence, by returning at least to the criterion of “viability of the fetus”.
With AFP
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