https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/10/texas-abortion-law-ban-enforcement/

 

Women’s rights has been an issue around the world for many years, especially a women’s right to bodily autonomy. In the text “Texas’ near-total abortion law”, author’s Erin Douglas and Carla Astudillo break down this law in a way that educates and informs others on how unreasonable and unconstitutional it is. I do believe these author’s to be credible because both Erin and Carla studied journalism. Throughout the text, although mostly informative and evidence based, they seem to be pro abortion since they mainly write on how the defendant of this law is affected. As well as how this law is “tilted” in a way that supports the anti abortionists. One thing I found interesting throughout the text was the fact that this law encourages civilians to sue people, in other words this act is called “expand standing”. Expand standing is the concept of governments empowering “civilians to sue for civil remedies.” Meaning that these people don’t even have to be related to this case in any way shape or form in order to sue for “generalized grievances, or harms that weren’t committed against them personally”. Not only that but they also encourage this by providing an award of “$10,000 as well as costs and attorney fees.” As if that wasn’t enough, to add salt to injury this law was made to restrict the defendants from using the 14th amendment, Rod v Wade decision, as a defense. Meaning that they made this law structured in a way that allows for a greater guarantee for the plaintiffs win. As well as the fact that the plaintiff can ” sue in the county in which they reside”. Causing great inconvenience and burden, finance wise, towards the defendant. The law was also made in a way that even if the plaintiff does lose the case, the defendant loses more than them. Since the law “bars the court from awarding costs or attorney’s fees back to the defendant even if the defendant successfully wins the lawsuit.” Although the defendant can only pay relief once, regardless of how many lawsuits they have, they still lose so much money trying to continuously fight off law suits. To add on, women are only allowed a 6 week period to have an abortion. This time line is very unreasonable because the majority of women aren’t aware of their pregnancy until about 4 weeks in. Especially women who have irregular periods and wouldn’t suspect a late period until a week of it being missing. Leaving only about  1-2 weeks to have an abortion. But this time frame is reduced even more because before having an abortion the patient has to have 2 ultrasounds before an abortion. Meaning that they would have to wait for these 2 visits, but these visits are mainly used to ensure the pregnancy as well as the cardiac activity. But because of the new law most medical sites just completely stopped performing abortions in order to avoid the risk of legal actions being taken against them. Most times the patient that was cleared for an abortion is denied that procedure in the second visit because cardiac activity was detected, causing the patient to be forced to conceive the child. To conclude, this law is not only unconstitutional and unreasonable its also unfair since it supports the plaintiffs side and denies women bodily autonomy, which shouldn’t even be up for debate since they should be able to do what they want, it’s their bodies after all. A government official or law shouldn’t be able to dictate what a women can or cannot do with her body. It is a clear violation of the 14th amendment.