Robert Barnes, Ann E. Marimow, Emily Wax-Thibodeaux and Ca | Published on 9/2/2021
A divided Supreme Court late Wednesday refused to block a Texas abortion statute that bans the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy, drawing sharp criticism from President Biden and a pledge from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to call a vote on legislation that would enshrine a woman's right to an abortion into federal law.
The court’s five most consistent conservatives — Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., plus President Donald Trump’s nominees to the court, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — said they would let the law stand while the legal battle over it continues.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court’s three liberals to say he would have kept the law from being implemented while the legality of the law was weighed in court. He described the Texas statute’s enforcement plan as “not only unusual, but unprecedented” and said it deserved more exacting judicial scrutiny.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was more heated in her dissent: “The Court’s order is stunning,” she wrote. “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”
With abortion clinics in Texas declaring they would halt the newly banned procedures, and abortion opponents celebrating a major legal victory, Biden (D) said the high court’s action “unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts.”
“And it not only empowers complete strangers to inject themselves into the most private of decisions made by a woman—it actually incentivizes them to do so with the prospect of $10,000 if they win their case,” Biden’s statement says. “For the majority to do this without a hearing, without the benefit of an opinion from a court below, and without due consideration of the issues, insults the rule of law and the rights of all Americans to seek redress from our courts.”
Pelosi said the law “unleashes one of the most disturbing, unprecedented and far-reaching assaults on health care providers – and on anyone who helps a woman, in any way, access an abortion – by creating a vigilante bounty system that will have a chilling effect.” She said the House, which has a slim Democratic majority, will vote on the Women’s Health Reproductive Act when it returns from recess later this month.
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