The Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court on Monday to issue an emergency cessation of the Texas Heartbeat Act, which restricts abortion to before a preborn child’s heartbeat can be detected. The Supreme Court already refused to stop the law at the request of abortionists in September in a 5 to 4 decision.
The request comes after the DOJ filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas last month in an attempt to stop the law. A federal judge issued an injunction and the law was blocked for 48 hours before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it.
The DOJ is arguing that the Supreme Court must act to stop the law because the Heartbeat Act defies the precedent set by the Court in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which said states could only limit abortion after “viability.” However, viability should never have been used as a cut-off point for a state’s ability to restrict abortion because it is arbitrary. A living human being’s viability is not dependent on any factor such as her inability to live outside of her natural environment. If a person is alive, as the preborn child is, then she is viable. Abortionists themselves have said that viability is subjective.
READ: Look for more states to pass laws like the Texas Heartbeat Act, says law’s author
The DOJ also argues that “[R]ather than forthrightly defending its law and asking this Court to revisit its decision, Texas took matters into its own hands by crafting an ‘unprecedented’ structure to thwart judicial review.” The law allows enforcement by the citizens of Texas rather than Texas itself and in doing so, said the DOJ, “Texas has, in short, successfully nullified this Court’s decisions within its borders.”
Essentially, the DOJ is playing to the power and ego of the Supreme Court and claiming that Texas is ignoring the Court’s authority, and therefore, the Court must shut the state and the law down.
The DOJ also argues predictably that the Heartbeat Act is unconstitutional. It also claims that the federal government “has authority to seek equitable relief to protect its sovereign interests — including its interest in the supremacy of federal law and the availability of the mechanisms for judicial review that Congress and this Court have long deemed essential to protect constitutional rights.”
It continued, “Allowing S.B. 8 to remain in force would irreparably harm those interests and perpetuate the ongoing irreparable injury to the thousands of Texas women who are being denied their constitutional rights.”
However, there is no right to abortion in the Constitution. No one has the right to inflict death on an innocent human being, even under the flawed argument of a right to privacy. In addition, while the Biden-Harris administration may argue that women are being harmed by the law, there is no proof of this. Research has shown, however, that abortion increases a woman’s risk of drug and alcohol use, depression, and suicidal thoughts and violently harms and kills innocent preborn children.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the justice who receives emergency filings for Texas, wants a response from Texas regarding the request from the DOJ by Thursday.
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