WRRAP Executive Director, Sylvia Ghazarian talks to Ms. Magazine about SB8, the Texas banning of abortion at 6 weeks, which the Supreme Court let stand this week. The full article was published in Ms. Magazine.
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Texas Lawmakers Achieved the Impossible: A Near-Total Ban on Abortion. Here’s How Feminists Are Fighting Back
While many states have come close, Texas on Wednesday achieved something no other state has: the banning of abortion at just six weeks gestation.
Legalscholarssay the law in question—Senate Bill 8—flies in the face of Supreme Court precedent established in Roe v. Wade, which recognized a constitutional right to abortion. Yet, for almost 24 hours, the court remained silent in response to a request to block implementation of the law. As such, the bill became law at midnight on Wednesday.
Then, just before midnight on Thursday, by a vote of 5–4, the Supreme Court announced it would let the law stand. The unsigned majority opinion cited “complex and novel” procedural questions as the reason for its inability to block the law’s implementation.
“The callous indifference shown by a majority of the Supreme Court to the suffering in Texas today is appalling,” said Dr. Jamila Perritt, a D.C. ob-gyn and president of Physicians for Reproductive Health, on Thursday.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the three liberal justices in dissent; he wrote that he would have blocked the law while appeals moved forward, calling it “not only unusual, but unprecedented.” In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the court decision “stunning.”
“We hear every single day about the impact of state bans. Texas’s is by far the most alarming,” said Sylvia Ghazarian, executive director of the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (WRRAP), the largest independent national abortion fund. “Abortion care can’t wait.”
