The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments regarding restrictive abortion laws in the state of Texas.
At the center of today’s hearing is S.B. 8, a controversial law that bans abortions in the state after a person is approximately six weeks pregnant. With that said, NBC News reports that federal law prevents the state from enforcing S.B. 8 itself, so it presents private citizens with the opportunity to sue anyone that carries out an abortion after six weeks. If successful in presenting a lawsuit, private citizens can collect up to $10,000 in Texas courts.
Immediately after S.B. 8 was passed, it was met with pushback from many private citizens and public officials around the country. Most critics argued that the law stands in direct contradiction to Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court decision that allowed for abortion in America.
“You can’t actually say Roe v. Wade is the law of the land while Texas’s law is enforceable, which has now been for 16 minutes,” Alliance For Justice Press Secretary Zack Ford tweeted after the law was passed in September.
“I wish I’d kept a list of all the men who patted me on the head over the last decade and told me Roe v. Wade was settled law and not to worry about it. Who told me that the federal courts would be fine; Trump can’t do that much damage. Who said SCOTUS wouldn’t get this bad,” Imani Gandy of Rewire News Group added.
Texas is not the only state to push forth such a law in recent memory. Next month, Mississippi is scheduled to present arguments to overthrow Roe v. Wade. With both cases threatening to change landmark decisions in America, it is unlikely that the court will issue a ruling in either case until 2022.
