Paul J. Weber of AP reports:
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Texas to suspend the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., which since September has banned most abortions in the nation’s second-most populous state.
The order by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman is the first legal blow to the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, which until now had withstood a wave of early challenges. In the weeks since the restrictions took effect, Texas abortion providers say the impact has been “exactly what we feared.”
But even with the law on hold, abortion services in Texas may not instantly resume because doctors still fear that they could be sued without a more permanent legal decision.
Read more on HuffPost.
Over on Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield blogs about the order, writing, in part:
Activists against the law, of which there are many, don’t really care much about the “legal niceties” involved. The law, SB8, is bad (which it is) and must be stopped (which it must). Since there is no question but that it flies in the face of Roe and Casey, and there really isn’t any question given the state of abortion law at this point, concern about all the “technicalities” of law, from standing to jurisdiction, are irrelevant. It must be stopped no matter what, and they would have been just as happy with a one page decision that read “this law sucks and it’s stayed, so bite me, Texas.”
In a weird way, this might have been a more legitimate rationale for the stay than whatever took 113 pages to explain.
He has such a way with words. Read more on Simple Justice.