Texas Judge Grants Restraining Order Against Anti-Abortion Group

Politics|Texas Judge Grants Restraining Order Against Anti-Abortion Group

A Texas justice granted a temporary restraining order against the state’s largest anti-abortion radical connected Friday, blocking it from suing Planned Parenthood and enforcing a six-week termination prohibition that went into effect this week.

Planned Parenthood volition inactive person to comply with the caller law, but it cannot beryllium sued by the group, Texas Right to Life, oregon its associates, according to the bid issued by Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County, which includes Austin.

Judge Gamble recovered that the law, Senate Bill 8, created “a probable, irreparable, and imminent injury,” astatine slightest temporarily, for Planned Parenthood, its unit and its patients, each of whom “would person nary capable remedy” if they were sued by Texas Right to Life oregon anyone affiliated with the group.

The order’s scope is constrictive and does not preclude different anti-abortion groups oregon anyone not associated with Texas Right to Life from suing Planned Parenthood. It is acceptable to expire connected Sept. 17.

Still, portion it is “not capable alleviation for Texas,” the bid protects Planned Parenthood’s unit and its wellness attraction providers, who person “continued to connection attraction arsenic champion they tin wrong the instrumentality portion facing surveillance, harassment, and threats from vigilantes anxious to halt them,” Helene Krasnoff, the vice president for nationalist argumentation litigation and instrumentality astatine Planned Parenthood, said successful a statement.

“We are relieved that the Travis County territory tribunal has acted rapidly to assistance this restraining bid against Texas Right to Life and anyone moving with them arsenic deputized enforcers of this draconian law,” Ms. Krasnoff said.

In a statement, Elizabeth Graham, the vice president of Texas Right to Life, said that the suit and bid would “not halt the work” of the organization.

“Planned Parenthood tin support suing us, but Texas Right to Life volition ne'er backmost down from protecting large women and preborn children from abortion,” Ms. Graham said.

John Seago, the group’s legislative director, said the restraining bid was not a superior impediment to the aboriginal of the law, which went into effect connected Wednesday aft the U.S. Supreme Court declined to artifact it. “This was the information of the authorities lawsuit each along, that it would beryllium utilized arsenic a emblem to question arsenic if the termination manufacture is winning erstwhile they’re really losing,” helium said.

The caller law, which was passed by Texas lawmakers this outpouring and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott successful May, amounts to a astir implicit prohibition connected abortion, arsenic astir women bash not cognize they are large until aft the sixth week of pregnancy. In Texas, 85 to 90 percent of abortions hap aft the sixth week, according to lawyers for respective clinics.

The law, which does not supply exceptions for rape oregon incest, bars authorities officials from enforcing it and alternatively deputizes backstage citizens to writer anyone who performs oregon “aids oregon abets” an termination successful usurpation of the law.

Texas Right to Life had already created a website, Prolifewhistleblower.com, to enactment arsenic a extremity enactment for the law’s violators. But activists connected TikTok snarled the tract with fabricated information.

Judge Gamble said the determination connected Friday evening upheld Texas Supreme Court precedent, penning that “the superior information for impermanent exigency alleviation is preserving the presumption quo portion courts see whether plaintiffs person demonstrated a probable close to the alleviation sought.”