Texas Passes Bill That Would Create Anti-Abortion Vigilantes
Source: Daily Beast
Texas lawmakers have sent Gov. Greg Abbott a bill that would allow anyone in the state to sue over an abortion performed past six weeksessentially turning right-to-lifers into courthouse vigilantes.
The law is a twist on the increasingly popular heartbeat laws that ban abortions past the date that a heartbeat can be detectedusually around six weeks gestation. (Experts say most embryos do not have a heart at this point, and that the technology is likely picking up an electric signal flutter.) Nine states have passed such six-week bans since 2013; all have been challenged in court and have yet to go into effect.
What differentiates Texas billand what some lawmakers hope will make it more effectiveis the ability for private individuals to sue to enforce it. Under the law, any person who believes that an abortion occurred after a fetal heartbeat can be detected can suefor minimum suggested damages of $10,000. And they can sue any number of people: the abortion provider, an abortion fund that helped pay for it, even a friend or family member who drove the woman to the clinic.
Its unprecedented, there's no question, Amy Hagstrom-Miller, CEO of Texas-based abortion clinic Whole Womans Health, told The Daily Beast. The idea that just anybody should be able to police a highly trained physician and their staffthat any Joe on the street can make that claimis just totally shocking."
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/texas-passes-heartbeat-bill-that-would-create-anti-abortion-vigilantes?ref=home
They do what they want, because they can.
TomDaisy
(1,828 posts)sinkingfeeling
(51,279 posts)Lonestarblue
(9,880 posts)They dont actually cate about women or the babies theyre forced to have. If they did, Texas would not have a maternal death rate that equals a third-world country or the largest number of people in the country with no health insurance. Republicans everywhere are mean, nasty people, but those in Texas occupy a special place for nastiness and cruelty just because they can.
carpetbagger
(4,384 posts)This is how we beat the gun lobby. In the meantime, the law will strike too close at the zone where most anti-abortion voters won't let the legislation go... The ability to outlaw abortion while maintaining the right for the three closest women in each of their lives.
bucolic_frolic
(42,679 posts)This law is Pandora's Box to product liability.
TheBlackAdder
(28,076 posts).
Just add a flat 10,000 new births each and every year, for 18 years, when emancipation occurs, and Texas will have an additional $3.4 Billion in local, county and state taxes to deal with. And that's not accounting for inflation.
.
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)And depending on how the bill is written there may be no liability for trying.
But clinics and hospitals must answer to every single one filed.
bucolic_frolic
(42,679 posts)CrispyQ
(36,234 posts)That's what they want, ultimately, for the man to dictate to the woman what she can do. For now they say to force women to carry to term, but once they take our choice away, the reverse could also be truethey could force women to have abortions. Remember the sterilizations down at the border?
I'm so sick of this fucking shit.
BillyBobBrilliant
(805 posts)the Gestapo used citizen informants to do their legwork? At least the similarity looms large.
skypilot
(8,848 posts)...how the person filing suit would "have standing" to file such a suit? Was that explained anywhere in the article? I was too disgusted to read the whole thing.
Probatim
(2,459 posts)Ilsa
(61,675 posts)Something I might would shoot back over, if I've been threatened and feel like I'm about to be robbed using the courthouse as a proxy.
Marrah_Goodman
(1,586 posts)skypilot
(8,848 posts)...which is an awesome city but in those moments when I imagine living there I am brought back to reality by the fact that I would be surrounded by the REST of Texas.
ck4829
(34,977 posts)mahina
(17,506 posts)This is just insane