TX Abortion Ban At 6 Wks Also Puts Anti- Choice Vigilantes In Charge, 10K Abortion Bounty, TX Stasi

[appalachiablue]

- Daily Kos, Sept. 1, 2021. The cruelty in the new Texas abortion ban has layers upon layers.

The Supreme Court didn’t just silently overturn Roe v. Wade by allowing a Texas law banning abortion at six weeks to go into effect. The Supreme Court, with its three Trump justices—two of them appointed through precedent-shattering Republican maneuvering—allowed Texas to put a bounty on the heads of anyone involved in any way in an abortion performed after six weeks gestation. (And never forget that six weeks is six weeks after the first day of a woman’s last period—meaning many women don’t yet know they’re pregnant at that time.)

In a must-read Twitter thread, legal analyst Jay Willis spells out the ways the new Texas law enables anti-choice vigilantes. That starts with the fact that anyone, whether or not they have ever met the woman obtaining medical care, can sue anyone who “aids and abets” an abortion. If the vigilante wins in court, they get $10,000 and their attorney’s fees. Someone who’s wrongly accused and proves it in court gets … to pay their own attorney’s fees. But it gets worse. “SB8 also allows lawsuits against people who INTEND to perform abortion or ‘aid or abet’ abortion,” Willis writes. “This is an open invitation to anti-choice activists to file lawsuits against everyone they don't like and try to drown them in frivolous litigation.”

And since the anti-abortion right has been funding networks of lawyers for years, they’re equipped for a lot of frivolous litigation. On top of all of the abusive ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands seeking to use the law to continue victimizing and controlling women who have left them. Not only that, Willis explains, ”People can bring suits up to FOUR YEARS later. And if a court decision briefly protects the right to abortion and then gets overruled, defendants can't rely on that, EVEN IF the decision was good law at the time. Perpetual threat of devastating liability.”

That’s not the only failsafe Republicans built into the law to make any victory over it fragile and temporary, either: “the law specifies that any court ruling that any part of SB8 is unconstitutional is temporary and can be overruled as soon as a friendlier court comes along. Utterly deranged, but also, what the conservative legal movement has been working for for decades.” Banning abortion at 6 weeks is an extreme attack on women’s right to make decisions about their own bodies. But it wasn’t enough for Texas Republicans. They went ahead and hedged it around with financial penalties even for the falsely accused, and attached to it a license for personal cruelty...

- Read More,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/1/2049585/-Texas-law-doesn-t-just-ban-abortion-at-six-weeks-it-puts-vigilantes-in-charge

** Please help Daily Kos fundraise so that West Fund, Fund Texas Choice, Frontera Fund, The Bridge Collective, Clinic Access Support Network, Lilith Fund, Texas Equal Access Fund, Jane’s Due Process, and Support Your Sistah at the Afiya Center can continue to ensure people can access the care they need—and protect their own staff and volunteers from legal threats.
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- 'It won't be just East Texas with a Stasi, now that there's a $10k abortion bounty on women,' Daily Kos,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/1/2049624/-it-won-t-be-just-East-Texas-with-a-Stazi-now-that-there-s-a-10k-abortion-bounty-on-women
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- 'Texas Right to Life sets up site asking for anonymous tips on people who get or offer abortions,'
https://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2021/08/24/texas-right-to-life-sets-up-site-asking-for-anonymous-tips-on-people-who-get-or-offer-abortions
https://democraticunderground.com/100215806531

[Mme. Defarge]

1. Is this what it will take

to end the filibuster?

[Budi]

2. Thanks for this clarifying OP.

I stand by every word I've stated today.

Thanks for nothing you selfish vapid bunch of assholes.

[appalachiablue]

7. Personal cruelty, bounty $$, a toxic mess.

[tulipsandroses]

3. What would be the cause of the lawsuits?

Legal folks help me out here. How can someone that has no damages, let alone have anything to do with a woman having an abortion have cause to bring suit?

[walkingman]

4. There is only one solution - vote out these crazy zealots. I've had enough of

these backwoods hillbillies. The Christian Taliban is a dominant force in the South. Texas will only be the first of the red states.

[alwaysinasnit]

5. Will contraceptives be next on the chopping block?

[appalachiablue]

6. Viagra is next!

[alwaysinasnit]

8. Yup, I sure would like to see the reaction of those male pissants if their erectile dysfunction

products were banned. lol

[appalachiablue]

9. They would flip, go berserk. Ban the stuff! Lol

[Tadpole Raisin]

10. The Texas Taliban!

I pray there are enough people in Texas who will finally recognize that every right they have earned is slowly being stripped away and the republicans aren’t even trying to hide it now.

[Irish_Dem]

11. 21st century version of the Salem witch trials.

Not much different.

[Paladin]

12. Those $10,000 bounties should come at high cost to the new vigilantes.

Let them be identified in media outlets. Then let the chips fall where they may.