The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to expedite arguments in challenges to the Texas abortion six-week abortion ban, with arguments slated for Nov. 1. But the Court again declined to block the law in the meantime. The law, which allows private citizens to sue people for helping a woman to get an abortion, will remain in place for now.

Governor Hutchinson has stated that Arkansas lawmakers should wait for “guidance” from the Court before proceeding with additional abortion legislation. He delayed a special session on tax cuts slated for next week that legislators like Sen. Jason Rapert saw as an avenue to pass a law similar to Texas. Rapert responded that there is no need to delay and that Texas has found a “secret sauce” with the law’s peculiar enforcement mechanism. He said that the legislature is ready to pass a similar piece of legislation now and has expressed confidence that the support is there. “We don’t need to wait on the U.S. Supreme Court for guidance,” he said earlier this week.

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the Court’s decision not to immediately block the law:

For the second time, the Court is presented with an application to enjoin a statute enacted in open disregard of the  constitutional rights of women seeking abortion care in Texas. For the second time, the Court declines to act immediately to protect these women from grave and irreparable harm.

While the Court was correct to expedite arguments, she wrote:

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The promise of future adjudication offers cold comfort, however, for Texas women seeking abortion care, who are entitled to relief now. These women will suffer personal harm from delaying their medical care, and as their pregnancies progress, they may even be unable to obtain abortion care altogether. Because every day the Court fails to grant relief is devastating, both for individual women and for our constitutional system as a whole, I dissent from the Court’s refusal to stay administratively the Fifth Circuit’s order.

The Texas case will involve procedural questions rather than the underlying constitutionality of the abortion ban:

May the United States bring suit in federal court and obtain injunctive or declaratory relief against the State, state court judges, state court clerks, other state officials, or all private parties to prohibit S.B. 8 from being enforced[?]

A different case involving a Mississippi law, slated to be argued on Dec. 1, directly involves Roe v. Wade, with the state asking that it be overturned.

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More from Sotomayor:

There are women in Texas who became pregnant on or around the day that S. B. 8 took effect. As I write these words, some of those women do not know they are pregnant. When they find out, should they wish to exercise their constitutional right to seek abortion care, they will be unable to do so anywhere in their home State. Those with sufficient resources may spend thousands of dollars and multiple days anxiously seeking care from out-of-state providers so overwhelmed with Texas patients that they cannot adequately serve their own communities. Those without the ability to make this journey, whether due to lack of money or childcare or employment flexibility or the myriad other constraints that shape people’s day-to-day lives, may be forced to carry to term against their wishes or resort to dangerous methods of self-help. None of this is seriously in dispute.

 

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