Roe v Wade has been overturned. How do you feel about that?

[Jude]

Am I correctly understanding that under this new law a man who rapes a woman will now be paid $10,000 by the state if he prevents her from getting an abortion?

That's the first thing I thought about when I read the article.

Ah, I have learned that Texas Democrats did manage to get an exclusion for this particular possibility. The rapist himself cannot turn in his victim to the state.

Does the exclusion specify "accused rapist" or does it only apply if there has already been a conviction? If the latter, the exclusion is completely useless.

[elengil]

Am I correctly understanding that under this new law a man who rapes a woman will now be paid $10,000 by the state if he prevents her from getting an abortion?

That's the first thing I thought about when I read the article.

Ah, I have learned that Texas Democrats did manage to get an exclusion for this particular possibility. The rapist himself cannot turn in his victim to the state.

Does the exclusion specify "accused rapist" or does it only apply if there has already been a conviction? If the latter, the exclusion is completely useless.

And sure, maybe he cant turn in the direct victim, but what about her sister who drives her there or the doctor who sees her for the procedure?

Now, my question would be - how many people can afford the lawyer fees to bring the lawsuit in the first place? Or afford the fees if the lawsuit doesn't go in their favor? We may be looking at this wrong, the people who can afford it and the busybodies who'll bother are the ones who'll be able to afford the lawyers to harass ... political opponents? Can they sue any Democrat who didn't sign on to the bill? Can they sue hospitals for treating a woman after the fact? Can they sue public transportation? Just how broad a scope do they have here? Realistically?

[N.E. Brigand]

I think the new law lets me sue Texas Governor Greg Abbott for assisting with an abortion.

There's no evidence that he's done so, but if (when) I lose the case, I gather the new law doesn't permit Abbott to recoup his legal costs from me.

Maybe a few thousand different people should sue him like that.

- - - - - - - - - - -
Darn it. As a government employee, would he be protected by some sort of qualified immunity?

[N.E. Brigand]

I just decided that I would drive down to Texas to help someone get an abortion. Then I changed my mind.

Too late! It appears that I've already broken the new law.

Because it allows for these suits to be filed against those who "intend to engage" in "conduct that aids and abets an abortion… regardless of whether the person [knows] or should have known that the abortion would be performed."

Now I'm going to need a GoFundMe to raise funds to defend myself.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I would like to say that this law is one of the most poorly conceived laws I've ever seen, but unfortunately that is not it. It is designed to be fully as evil as it is. (But it has rivals for the worst laws passed by the Texas legislature recently.)

[elengil]

I would like to say that this law is one of the most poorly conceived laws I've ever seen,...

I almost feel bad for noticing the pun. But that's just how my brain works.

[Inanna]

Ha!

[Frelga]

Nice website they've got for snitching on your neighbors. Be a shame if something happened to it...

TikToker Makes Script to Flood Texas Abortion 'Whistleblower' Site With Fake Info

[Jude]

I would like to say that this law is one of the most poorly conceived laws I've ever seen,...

I almost feel bad for noticing the pun. But that's just how my brain works.

You know, as of now the law is less than six weeks old. Just saying...

[Dave_LF]

I would imagine it's no coincidence they're passing this unpopular bill in the immediate aftermath of ones that make it illegal for their opponents to vote and that allow them to throw out election results they don't like.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The statutory scheme before the Court is not only unusual, but unprecedented. The legislature has imposed a prohibition on abortions after roughly six weeks, and then
essentially delegated enforcement of that prohibition to the populace at large. The desired consequence appears to be to insulate the State from responsibility for implementing and enforcing the regulatory regime.

The State defendants argue that they cannot be restrained from enforcing their rules because they do not enforce them in the first place. I would grant preliminary relief to preserve the status quo ante—before the law went into effect—so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner

I recognize that Texas’s law delegates the State’s power to prevent abortions not to one person (such as a district attorney) or to a few persons (such as a group of government
officials or private citizens) but to any person. But I do not see why that fact should make a critical legal difference. That delegation still threatens to invade a constitutional right, and the coming into effect of that delegation still threatens imminent harm.

The Court’s order is stunning. Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand. Last night, the Court silently acquiesced in a State’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents. Today, the Court belatedly explains that it declined to grant relief because of procedural complexities of the State’s own invention. Ante, at 1. Because the Court’s failure to act rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas, I dissent.

[N.E. Brigand]

As of this afternoon, there hadn't been a single mention of this huge victory for the (misleadingly named) "pro-life" cause on Fox News.

It also hadn't been mentioned on the Twitter feeds of Texas Republican governor or two Republican U.S. senators.

[N.E. Brigand]

Nice website they've got for snitching on your neighbors. Be a shame if something happened to it...

TikToker Makes Script to Flood Texas Abortion 'Whistleblower' Site With Fake Info

This is funny, but would it work? Maybe. The real danger is not so much that someone will successfully bring one of these vigilante anti-abortion assistance lawsuits, but that someone *could* do so. No one wants the financial ruin. It doesn't matter much that the process doesn't really work, unless everyone is firmly convinced that's the case and that it's impossible to succeed. So the activists have to be so overwhelming that really get all the reporting mechanisms shut down.

[Frelga]

If one were to undertake an attack on a hypothetical public website, the goal would be to make the data unusable by filling it with plausible but inaccurate records that would be prohibitively difficult to verify. Adding a million records for Ted Cruz won't do it.

This is not my area of expertise, but I imagine it could work by generating entries from a random dataset. A more malicious attacker could for example scrape social media of people with opposing views for data elements and put them in.

Not that I am in any way advocating any such action.

[River]

So does this law also apply to treatments for tubal pregnancies or placental abruptions? What happens if you miscarry, your partner drives you to the hospital, and your neighbor is a complete jerk and decides your family's tragedy is their financial gain?

[RoseMorninStar]

Fetuses who die in utero don't always spontaneously deliver and a procedure is required to remove tissue to prevent infections/problems. The technical term for this is an abortion. While many 'miscarriages' spontaneously abort, it is quite common that further treatment is required. Miscarriage is very common in the first 3 months, some statistics guess about 1 in 4 pregnancies, greater or lesser depending up on the age of the mother. The process is bad enough. I can't imagine what a can of worms this will open/pain this causes women who are miscarrying.

[Frelga]

That happened to my friend. Faulty implantation. A clump of cells stuck to the wrong place that was never going to develop into a baby but wasn't coming out on its own. Her body kept thinking it was pregnant. It required a D&C to treat. It was traumatic enough in itself, without having to deal with this bullshit.

[N.E. Brigand]

Anti-choice activist Lila Rose today endorsed radio host Larry Elder as California's next governor. Elder is the leading candidate in the recall election attempting to oust the current governor, Gavin Newsom. Rose says that she spoke with Elder and if elected, he promises:

"1. To use line-item veto power to cut all abortion funding
2. To veto all abortion expansion and abortion misinformation legislation
3. To drop all charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt
4. To appoint judges and regulators who respect the constitutional right to life".

Make California Texas!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Elder probably doesn't want that "help." Republicans today are the dog that caught the car. As noted above, the most prominent Texas Republicans, and many others across the nation, are largely staying silent about the news. A number of those Republicans who have mentioned last night's move by the Court are trying to downplay it, claiming that nothing has changed and that Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land even in Texas.

As one Washington Post reporter notes, this is not too suprising for those who have been paying attention to Republicans' rhetoric about abortion over the past few years. They like using it as motivation to rally their base, but actually overturning Roe -- as yesterday's move really does, albeit probably only temporarily -- takes away something for their base to fight for and makes their opponents really, really mad (and the public at large, by a clear margin, favors keeping Roe in place).

When Joe Biden said in a debate last year that Roe v. Wade was "on the ballot" in 2020, President Trump replied, "You don't know what's on the ballot. Why is it on the ballot? Why is it on the ballot? It's not on the ballot." Trump knew that if people really thought Roe was in danger, they'd come out against him. While I think what the Court did just stinks, and some people are going to suffer for a time, in the long run, I suspect it backfires.

[River]

With all respect, NE, I think Trump was just blathering as usual. Now the people who were cozied up to him...

[Voronwë the Faithful]

While I think what the Court did just stinks, and some people are going to suffer for a time, in the long run, I suspect it backfires.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?