Top courts in Texas and Ohio on Friday allowed Republican-led states to enforce restrictions and bans on abortions after the US Supreme Court last week struck down constitutional abortion rights across the country.
Thus, the Texas Supreme Court last night restored a 1925 law that prohibits abortion and that the state attorney general had ordered to implement after the federal Supreme Court ended the protection of abortion.
The conservative-majority US Supreme Court has restored the authority of states to ban abortions, setting off a series of lawsuits seeking to preserve women’s right to terminate pregnancies.
The Texas Supreme Court ruling only temporarily restores the law pending a final decision.
In practice, what the court did was to block the ruling of a lower court that had prevented the entry into force of the law at the request of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and the Union for Civil Liberties in America (ACLU). ), who represented clinics that perform abortions.
The 1925 law establishes a sentence of up to five years in prison for those doctors who help a woman to interrupt her pregnancy. The legislation prohibits abortion in cases of incest or rape and only establishes an exception in case the life of the mother is in danger.
On the ground, the situation in Texas is one of confusion as both patients and doctors do not know what regulations are or are not in force.
Abortion is currently illegal in seven of the 50 US states: Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin and West Virginia.
Arizona, Kentucky, Louisiana and Utah had also announced their intention to ban abortion, but the courts blocked the implementation of the laws that prohibit that right.
