U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman temporarily blocked prosecutors in eight counties from pursuing charges against anyone who helps someone get an abortion outside of Texas. Story by TexasTribune.
Protesters demonstrate in downtown San Antonio following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June. On Friday, a federal judge temporarily blocked prosecutors in eight counties from pursuing charges against anyone who helps someone get an abortion outside of Texas.A federal judge issued a favorable ruling for Texas abortion funds, indicating they likely cannot be criminally charged for helping people travel out of state to terminate their pregnancies.
But Pitman ruled Friday that Paxton could not enforce Texas’ abortion bans against anyone who helped pay for an abortion out of state and dismissed him from the suit. Paxton and the district attorneys do have the power to enforce the trigger law, which comes with a sentence of up to life in prison and a minimum $100,000 penalty. The law criminalizes anyone who performs an abortion, except to save the life of the pregnant person.The law “does not express any intent, much less a clear one, to apply extraterritorially,” he wrote.
Pitman enjoined the named district attorneys — who represent Travis, Washington, Blanco, Burnell, Llano, San Saba and Caldwell counties — and a county attorney, representing Burleson County, from enforcing the pre-Roe statutes against the abortion funds while the case proceeds. In 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas’ abortion laws were unconstitutional, it said that “the Texas abortion statutes, as a unit, must fall.” The state removed the statutes from the penal code, and in 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit found that they had been “repealed by implication.”
When Roe was overturned last June, Paxton issued guidance indicating the pre-Roe statutes were immediately in effect. He tweeted, “Texas’s pre-Roe statutes criminalizing abortion is 100% good law, and I’ll ensure they’re enforceable.”
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