Texas asks Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in legal papers defending abortion ban
Texas on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to overturn its landmark Roe v. Wade decision in legal papers defending the state’s new law that effectively bans abortion.
Claiming the top court “erred in recognizing the right to abortion” in the 1973 decision, the Lone Star State urged the court’s dominant conservative majority to roll back the clock and allow the restrictive Texas law to stand.
“The idea that the Constitution requires States to permit a woman to abort her unborn child is unsupported by any constitutional text, history, or tradition,“ Attorney General Ken Paxton, a conservative Republican, wrote in a 52-page filing. “Properly understood, the Constitution does not protect a right to elective abortion.”
Paxton said the Texas law does not violate the Constitution because Roe and another landmark case called Planned Parenthood vs. Casey were wrongly decided.
“The Court should overturn Roe and Casey and hold that (the Texas law) does not therefore violate the (Constitution),” the filing states.
The court filing came in response to the federal Justice Department’s effort to get the high court to block the law, the most restrictive abortion curb in the nation.
Texas defended an order by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed the abortion law to go back into effect after a lower-court judge put it on hold.
“In sum, far from being demonstrably wrong, the Fifth Circuit’s conclusion that Texas is likely to prevail was entirely right,” the state wrote.
The Biden administration argues the law is “clearly unconstitutional” because it bans abortions at roughly six weeks, long before a fetus can survive outside the womb. The Supreme Court’s major abortion rulings make clear that states can regulate but not prohibit abortions before the unborn child could survive.
But the Texas law was written in a convoluted way that has so far succeeded in evading federal court review.
It empowers private citizens to effectively enforce the law by permitting them to sue abortion providers, doctors and anyone who so much as assists a woman to get an abortion. The law covers all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before most women would even know they are pregnant.
The court already has abortion on its agenda in a case from Mississippi that will be argued on Dec. 1.
Once narrowly divided, the Supreme Court is now dominated by a 6-3 conservative majority, with several justices openly critical of Roe v. Wade.
With News Wire Services
