Texas abortion law likely to spill over to South Dakota
Texas’ law banning abortion after six weeks gestation has been in the news and, like many issues, it has been reported in such a way as to create more confusion. Any judicial appeal, and especially an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, carries with it specific requirements as to “standing”, “irreparable harm” and “exhaustion” of remedies available in lower courts, just to name a few. In the Texas case there were procedural issues which affected the Supreme Court’s actual consideration of the “constitutionality” of abortion.
The Texas case involved an application for “injunctive relief” or, in the alternative, an application to vacate “stays of the district court proceedings.” The Supreme Court stated that “To prevail in an application for a stay or an injunction, an applicant must carry the burden of making a ‘strong showing’ that it is ‘likely to succeed on the merits,’ that it will be ‘irreparably injured absent a stay,’ that the balance of the equities favors it, and that a stay is consistent with the public interest.” The Court went on to say that “The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue. But their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden. For example, federal courts enjoy the power to enjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves. And it is unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to enforce the Texas law against the applicants in a manner that might permit our intervention. (‘threatened injury must be certainly impending’.)
The Supreme Court ultimately said “In light of such issues, we cannot say the applicants have met their burden to prevail in an injunction or stay application. In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts.”
The short answer to questions about this case is: The case wasn’t properly before the Court due to the failure to identify the correct procedural concerns so the Court could even consider the underlying constitutional issue. Thus, the Supreme Court DID NOT rule on the constitutionality of abortion or even the “Heartbeat Bill”, but simply recognized that the Texas law had artfully been drafted to make an appeal very difficult.
Each year in the South Dakota Legislature we will consider several Bills that impact abortion. Some of those will be Bills to increase reporting requirements, some will be Bills to provide additional information to the mother, some will limit the availability of abortion under various circumstances, etc. Thankfully, over the years, there has been an increasing awareness and scientific verification of the overall development of unborn children. The Texas law has seized upon that scientific information, and we will likely see similar legislation depending upon the ongoing litigation in the Texas case.
The discussion oftentimes revolves around the idea that we should want to ensure that abortion is rare. The annual numbers of abortions reported has dropped in recent years, but that is because of the availability of ‘over the counter’ chemicals to abort babies. However, there are still nearly TWO-THIRDS OF A MILLION abortions each year in the United States. In South Dakota, since 1973, there have been approximately FORTY-FIVE THOUSAND (45,000) children aborted here. If those children had been born and grew up to enjoy a life of their own and children of their own, we would not have young women who have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and the pain of personal loss from abortion. Instead, we would have hundreds of thousands of people here in South Dakota who would have families that have overcome adversity, and a population that would represent a vibrant workforce, people who would have achieved great things for themselves and society as a whole, and many of those people would be our friends and family.
So, our goals now should be to instill in our children principles that will span the generations and result in the natural blessings of life itself.
Please feel free to contact me with questions or comments or go to www.sdlegislature.gov to see what else is happening in state government.
