Texas Heartbeat Law Goes Into Effect, Banning Most Abortions Since SCOTUS Hasn’t Acted Yet
The pro-abortion people have lost their minds because God forbid Texas is trying to stop infanticide.
The Texas heartbeat law went into effect on Wednesday, September 1, at midnight.
The law places the most restrictions on abortion since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973.
The pro-abortion people wanted SCOTUS to step in because the law could stop 85% of the abortions in the state. Many clinics will have to close.
SCOTUS received the challenge to the bill on Monday, which “centered on the preliminary question of what rules should apply in Texas while abortion providers continue to challenge the ban in lower courts.”
SCOTUS has not answered.
The Law
The legislation states basic biology: “pregnancy begins with fertilization” and “occurs when the woman is carrying the developing human offspring.” The authors said pregnancy is also determined by the date of a female’s last period.
Also from the bill:
Sec. 171.202. LEGISLATIVE FINDINGS. The legislature finds, according to contemporary medical research, that:
(1) fetal heartbeat has become a key medical predictor that an unborn child will reach live birth;
(2) cardiac activity begins at a biologically identifiable moment in time, normally when the fetal heart is formed in the gestational sac;
The gestational sac is the “structure compromising the extraembryonic membranes that envelop the unborn child and that is typically visible by ultrasound after the fourth week of pregnancy.” It is not the placenta.
The law forbids a physician from knowingly performing or inducing “an abortion on a pregnant woman.”
The physician can perform or induce an abortion if “the physician has determined, in accordance with this section, whether the woman’s unborn child has a detectable fetal heartbeat.”
So the abortion can only happen in a medical emergency. Rape and incest do not count. The person who impregnated the woman “through rape or incest could not sue.”
The Texas Heartbeat Act allows private citizens to “bring a civil action against any person who”:
(1) performs or induces an abortion in violation of this chapter;
(2) knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this chapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this chapter.
The person cannot “have a connection to an abortion provider or a person seeking an abortion.”
Pro-Abortion People Losing Their Minds
Those who approve of infanticide are going nuts on social media. The hyperbole is off the wall. People who supposedly “believe the science” about everything ignore basic biology.
EHRMEHGERD TEXAS HATES WOMYNZ. How about the unborn human female? While you cannot detect the human’s sex until around 20-24 weeks, the sex is determined at conception along with every other aspect: hair color, eye color, etc.
SCIENCE. Believe in science except when it comes to life.
I am calling on Joe Biden and the UN to lead a humanitarian effort to airlift women out of Texas. The North American Taliban has seized control of Texas.
— Christopher Bouzy (@cbouzy) September 1, 2021
If you’re not in a rage about Texas Republicans overturning roe you’re not paying attention
— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) September 1, 2021
In Texas, it’s easier to buy a gun to murder people with than to exercise the fundamental right in a republic by voting.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) September 1, 2021
Nothing worse than walking my teenage daughter to school and explaining to her how Republicans used the shadow docket to overturn Roe in the state of Texas.
— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) September 1, 2021
In Texas, a fetus is a person but the woman carrying it isn't#TexasAbortionBan #TexasTaliban
— BrentSullivan🔻Ⓥ🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@BrentSullivan) September 1, 2021
If you support this horrific anti-abortion bill in Texas, you are not pro-life.
You’re anti-women.
— ŞΜί丅є!⚡️ (@7Veritas4) September 1, 2021
Texas is bad for women.
— John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz) September 1, 2021
Good morning. Texas is still the most dangerous state in which to give birth, and if it was a country it would have the highest maternal and infant mortality rates of any country in the global North.
— Melissa, Apocalyptist (@MelissaFloBix) September 1, 2021
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Comments
There’s no heart at six weeks so no hearbeat.
During the first few weeks of pregnancy, your tiny embryo is shaped like a flat disk. By 5 weeks, two tubes that will become the heart have formed. The two tubes fuse together and blood flows through this tubular “heart” as it begins to beat.
Between 6 and 7 weeks, the heart tube twists and bends into an S shape. The bottom of the tube moves up and toward the back and will form the two upper heart chambers (atria). The top of the tube will form the two lower heart chambers (ventricles) as well as the large vessels that transport blood from the heart.
By 9 weeks, the four chambers of the heart are formed.
No fully formed heart and the heart beat is the electrical pulse rather than a heart beat.
Nobody said “fully formed”. And what the **** do you think a heartbeat is?
Clearly you’re wrong if the heartbeat can be detected.
He’s saying that it’s not a heartbeat, because the tube-shaped thing that’s producing it is not yet a heart.
Which is an argument a defendant could make to a court: Your Honor, here is an ultrasound picture I took before the procedure, the beating detected was being produced by that thing there, which is not a heart, therefore I was not in violation of this law and this suit should be dismissed.
The problem is that this appears to impose strict liability — i.e. no mens rea required. If the court says that is a heart, the defendant is liable regardless of his opinion at the time. And there’s no way a doctor, or an insurer, or the Uber driver who took the woman there, can know in advance what the court will decide if and when there’s a lawsuit.
Nor (at least from what I’ve seen quoted) does there seem to be anything preventing multiple people suing over the same incident, since everyone has been given standing and there’s no double jeopardy, so if one judge decides that isn’t a heart someone else can sue before a different judge and try again.
So the effect would be to prevent anyone from even taking a chance of anything that might potentially be considered a violation. That seems wrong.
It’s sort of like passing a law giving anybody who’s offended by speech to sue the speaker.
Modelled after hostile work environment perhaps.
While I support the goal of this legislation, I’m concerned that this model could easily be used by a state that wishes to ban anything it doesn’t like, including fundamental civil liberties.
Whether we like it or not, the current state of federal law, as defined by the Supreme Court, is that the “right” to murder a baby is the same as the right to publish a newspaper. So what’s to stop some state from enacting a law allowing people to sue anyone who publishes a newspaper? Or from instituting a “license” that would exempt a publisher from being sued under such a law?
I think the Supreme Court ought to overturn Roe and Casey, but it ought also to overturn this Texas law; preferably at the same time.
Allowing private Citizens to act as private AG isn’t a completely horrible idea. They would still be subject to the normal evidentiary standards, the normal rules of procedure and the normal disciplinary acts of the CT.
As the process unfolds and frivolous suits are dismissed, the plaintiffs and their attorney sanctioned we would have a more effective tool to use. If the State AG office refuses to act there isn’t much recourse but the next election. In one party ruled States or Cities allowing for private actions could be an important spur.
Maybe it’s worth trying in our laboratory of democracy to see if the process can be applied reasonably?
A) Not banned…restricted to a degree those in the state want…Federalism
B) No fundamental civil right to” murder a baby” exists. That’s NOT what the original ruling was based on tho the left’s version of the Bill of Rights does only have 1 right…which is yes..their right to murdrr a baby up to and including after birth.
TX still allows abortion, this law doesn’t change that. This law simply moves up the timeline to a point prior to fetal heartbeat. Incidences of rape and incest are unaffected.
The media and pro abortion groups can gaslight as much as they desire, the truth is abortion will remain a lawful procedure in TX. The law will certainly restrict those second and third trimester abortions that these groups insist don’t happen or if they do are ‘rare’.
Let’s set the date at which at detectable heartbeat occurs to be about six weeks or so, just for the sake of discussion. Not only will 2nd and 3rd trimester terminations be banned, but most 1st trimester terminations will be stopped as well. For those of us who are pro-life this of course is good. But it’s firmly stepping all over the Roe decision. For the USSC to allow this it effectively has to repeal Roe.
Repeal? Roe is not a law, it is simply a bad court decision.
Steve,
This TX law isn’t really in conflict with Roe. Recall that what Roe did was to establish a constitutional protection for the termination of a pregnancy prior to viability.
This law doesn’t fundamentally alter that. We can debate the timing of when viability occurs but clearly that point is closer to the first two months of pregnancy today than in 1973.
I’m not clear how the basic biology refers to any facet for or against abortion. It’s also not infanticide since it’s not an infant it’s a feotus. It’s a spectacularly poor argument for the article addressing none of the issues around abortion. Since when was a good idea to sue someone regarding their own medical situation. All this will do is drive women to use illegal methods and to go somewhere with more reasonable laws.
We seem so bewildered about abortion—when does this form, when does this happen, etc. While there is a lot of gray area with us, I would assure you that with God everything is black and white.
How do you know? The existence of such things as quantum physics and fuzzy logic would seem to indicate the contrary.
I’m not talking about fuzzy logic, I’m talking about right and wrong.
Ahh morality eh. Well is it moral to force someone to grow a feotus inside of them even in cases of rape.
God doesn’t help morality either since even if you have faith that he exists there is no way of knowing what his morality actually is, given the vast number of contradictions in the bible, the number of denominations in Christianity alone let alone deciding which god is real or not. Its a pretty poor way of determining morality and one that has directly caused many many evils.
Mark,
Abortion remains legal in TX. This law doesn’t alter that nor does it force anyone to do anything. To argue otherwise is unserious.
Get a DNA test first and then execute the rapist before you execute his offspring.
Of course, then you have the Constitutional prohibition against punishing the descendants of those convicted of treason that some would argue the that same principle applies.
God defines morality. The definition of morality is whatever God says.
.
Fuzzy logic is part of reality. As is quantum physics. And since God created both, they indicate that there is indeed such a thing as grey with Him.
Okay, I see your point now. I also agree with your post above about morality.
Perhaps the upset liberals can move to CA or OR or WA or IL where the shrines to Margaret Sanger are safe.
Oh please!
Sanger, Cecile, and Mengele, too. And whoever operates the forges… clinics in China, and other woke nations.
Progress (i.e. unqualified monotonic change), yes and no. Baby steps, in the right direction.
The science and humanity of sex (in our confused times: male and female [vaginal] copulation) and conception is not a mystery. This is why the abortionists tried to claim systemic rape.. .rape-rape society. This is why social abortionists and clinical cannibals refer to a baby that is inconvenient, unworthy, or profitable with the technical term of art “fetus” in order to socially/politically distance themselves from the wicked solution.
That said, the choice is self-evident: abstention, prevention, adoption, and compassion. The nominally “secular” Pro-Choice religion (“ethics”, morality’s relativistic sibling) denies a woman and man’s dignity and agency, and reduces human life to a negotiable asset.
Actually it’s not just ripping apart a baby in the womb that Democrats support, remember Democrats have advocated newly born babies being killed too. Remember, born alive is a mistake that needs correcting.
Ironically the party that claims to be pro-women is the same party that denies a right to life to women of a certain age, and tries to claim men can be women too. To put it more concisely, Democrats are pro-women in the same sense the Third Reich was pro-Jewish.
That is the same party that has been waging a war against women since its inception!
https://vimeo.com/325006095
Your Life Before Birth
Just for fun, if scientists ever invent a time machine, the first thing we should do is send everyone who believes in abortion back to their mother’s womb so they can be aborted.
Wouldn’t it be nice if this law made all the commies living in Texas move out of the state? This could be a win-win for Texas in more ways than they could have imagined.
That would be so bad for the rest of the country. At least in Texas they are out numbered.