A Democratic State Representative from north Texas is encouraging abortion clinics to resume offering the procedure after a federal district judge ruled against the state's new restrictive abortion law, Senate Bill 8. Some clinics did resume seeing patients after the judge's ruling Wednesday night, but some are still waiting for a follow-up ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Senate Bill 8 restricts abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually around the sixth week of pregnancy. It allows anyone to sue someone suspected of helping to provide an abortion after that cardiac activity is detected. The Biden Administration sued to block the law, and a federal judge in Austin ruled that it was an "offensive deprivation" of women's rights. The judge's ruling will prohibit courts in Texas from accepting lawsuits filed under SB 8.
"What Texas did was unconstitutional at the moment that they decided to introduce it. Sadly enough, the bill's authors - on the House side as well as the Senate side - they're both lawyers. They knew better," said State Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas. "What the legislature wanted to do was they wanted to make sure there was a chilling effect in the state of Texas, and they accomplished that."
She's urging clinics worried about being retroactively sued for procedures performed while the law is on hold to go ahead with providing those services, since she is confident the law will be overturned.
"I do believe that as doctors, as health care professionals, that they do have a duty," she said, "and that duty is to take care of those that are in need."
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