Texas Supreme Court deals final blow to federal abortion law challenge

[Jim__]

34. I believe the key is the "private enforcement mechanism."

I'm not a lawyer, so this is my non-expert opinion. But I take this paragraph to be the key:

The law has a unique private-enforcement mechanism that empowers private citizens to sue anyone who, in the law’s language, “aids or abets” an abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy.

Here's a brief summary of the Roe v Wade decision:

The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state action the right to privacy, and a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion falls within that right to privacy. A state law that broadly prohibits abortion without respect to the stage of pregnancy or other interests violates that right. Although the state has legitimate interests in protecting the health of pregnant women and the “potentiality of human life,” the relative weight of each of these interests varies over the course of pregnancy, and the law must account for this variability.

In the first trimester of pregnancy, the state may not regulate the abortion decision; only the pregnant woman and her attending physician can make that decision. In the second trimester, the state may impose regulations on abortion that are reasonably related to maternal health. In the third trimester, once the fetus reaches the point of “viability,” a state may regulate abortions or prohibit them entirely, so long as the laws contain exceptions for cases when abortion is necessary to save the life or health of the mother.

It seems like the decision explicitly prohibits state action. The Texas law is enforced by the private law suits of citizens - not the state. The argument was that state medical licensing officials could enforce the law. The Supreme Court left that question open. The Texas supremes ruled that they couldn't. Therefore the law is not enforced by the state. It's outside the Roe v Wade ruling.