Department of Justice Moves to Block Texas Abortion Ban

In response to Texas’s horrific abortion new abortion law, which restricts all access to abortion after six weeks from a pregnant person’s last period and allows private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who even helps someone access the procedure, the U.S. Justice Department has sued the state in order to try and block the law.

After filing the suit in federal court in Austin, Texas, Attorney General Merrick Garland told press at a news conference that the statewide ban “is clearly unconstitutional under longstanding Supreme Court precedent,” which is supposed to protect an American’s ability to have an abortion up until the fetus would be viable outside the womb. SCOTUS voted last week to let the Texas law stand, which effectively renders Roe v. Wade toothless.

“It takes little imagination to discern Texas’s goal — to make it too risky for an abortion clinic to operate in the State, thereby preventing women throughout Texas from exercising their constitutional rights, while simultaneously thwarting judicial review,” the DOJ complaint states.

While the law does make provisions if the life of the pregnant person is at risk during the pregnancy, it does not make exceptions for rape or incest. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) tried to defend that aspect of the law on Tuesday by promising to “eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas,” though it’s unclear how he plans to do that.

Though Texas’s law is the only draconian anti-abortion measure currently in effect in the U.S., a dozen other states have similar “trigger” laws that would go into effect should the Supreme Court actively overturn Roe v. Wade. And the high court has already made its intentions clear.