Please read earlier posts on this matter if you have not done so. This will be a brief overview and update.
The Texas Fetal Heartbeat Law took effect on September 1, 2021. Abortion providers had a lawsuit prepared to go before the US Supreme Court, and the Court was ready to issue an opinion. On September 2, 2021, the Court refused to block the law from taking effect by a 5-4 vote . However, the Court also said that “we do not purport to resolve [the matter] definitively” and that they do not make “any conclusion about the constitutionality” of the law.
President Biden condemned the ruling and vowed to use the resources of the White House to protect unrestricted abortion in Texas, and he ordered the Justice Department to explore all options to challenge the Texas Law. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to take up legislation to codify access to abortion so that the states could not regulate or place any limits on the procedure. This would surely be met with confrontation based on the 10th Amendment which reserves rights to the states unless expressly given to Congress by the constitution.
Pro-abortion factions brought another lawsuit to try to prevent Texas from awarding damages to successful lawsuits brought under the terms of the law. On October 6, a lower court did rule to block the law, but on October 8, an Appeals Court reversed that ruling.
The Supreme Court (Justice Alito) granted a petition by the Justice Department to hear their case in opposition to the Texas Law. At issue is whether the federal government has the power to stop state officials or private citizens from acting according to the Texas Law.
Justice Alito also scheduled arguments to begin November 1 in the case of Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson concerning the Texas Fetal Heartbeat Law.
In the meantime, the Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case. Readers will remember that this concerns the Mississippi law which restricts abortion.
Pro-abortion factions are anxious about the outcome of these cases. In 1992, the Supreme Court ruling in Casey allowed the individual states to enact laws (within limits) that restricted abortion. That led to hundreds of laws being proposed, and many were signed into law in their respective states. Some of them have temporary injunctions at the present time. Abortion advocates fear that a decision in Dobbs that affirms the right of states under the 10th Amendment to enact regulations in matters not expressly designated to Congress by the constitution would essentially overturn the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.
Whereas pro-abortion factions want to cling to Roe, the ruling has always been highly controversial. It relied on interpretations of various Amendments to find a “right” to an abortion which was unknown to those framing those amendments. Pro-abortion people saw what they wanted to see, but legal scholars have been baffled.
Experts say that the reason the Court took the Dobbs case over objections by abortionists is because many aspects of the rulings in Roe are very outdated. For example, science has now confirmed that new life starts at conception, and advances in health care now makes the fetal viability issue in Roe invalid. And, a core issue is whether the people in the individual states have the right to make decisions regulating abortion in their states, as the 10th Amendment seems to guarantee.