Community Catalyst Condemns Supreme Court Decision to Keep Texas’s Extreme Abortion Ban in Place

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

(BOSTON, MA) -- Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that abortion providers in Texas could proceed with lawsuits challenging the nation’s strictest abortion ban law. However, these narrow challenges can only be advanced against state licensing officials. Moreover, the court refused to block the abortion ban while legal challenges take place in the lower federal courts. The Texas law, which is one of the most restrictive in the country, will not only jeopardize the lives and liberties of people seeking safe access to abortion, it also sets a dangerous precedent by granting private citizens the right to enforce the law. This essentially empowers anti-abortion vigilantes who can sue anyone who performs an abortion or ‘aids and abets’ the provision of abortion. The decision comes after recent arguments before the high court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’ Health organization, the Mississippi case challenging a ban on abortion after 15 weeks – a direct challenge to people’s constitutional right to abortion under Roe v. Wade. 

Statement of Emily Stewart, executive director of Community Catalyst, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Texas law banning abortion to remain in place amid legal challenges: 

“We are deeply troubled by the Supreme Court’s decision to keep in place Texas’s extreme abortion ban law, which is an outrageous and cruel attack on people’s reproductive freedom and overall health and wellbeing. The law is particularly harmful for people with low-incomes, disproportionately Black and brown people, who already face enormous obstacles to abortion and essential sexual and reproductive health care because of systemic racism and unfair barriers to economic security. Though this unconstitutional and discriminatory law has only been in effect for a few months, it is already greatly impeding people’s access to abortion, a fundamental right supported by a majority of people in the US, including Texans.  

“Community Catalyst stands by our partners in Texas and across the country who are working to protect people’s reproductive freedom, and we will never stop fighting for the right of all people in all states to have access to safe and legal abortion.” 

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About Community Catalyst: Community Catalyst is a leading non-profit national health advocacy organization dedicated to advancing a movement for health equity and justice. We partner with local, state and national advocates to leverage and build power so all people can influence decisions that affect their health. Health systems will not be accountable to people without a fully engaged and organized community voice. That’s why we work every day to ensure people’s interests are represented wherever important decisions about health and health care are made: in communities, state houses and on Capitol Hill. For more information, visit http://www.communitycatalyst.org. Follow us on Twitter @CommCatHealth.