Abortion rights advocates filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block a Texas law that would empower private citizens to enforce the state\u2019s ban on virtually all abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.<\/p>\n
The 49-page complaint alleges that Texas\u2019s new law, which is set to take effect Sept. 1, runs afoul of a woman\u2019s constitutional right to a pre-viability abortion.<\/p>\n
It also takes aim at a provision that authorizes citizens to sue those who perform or \u201caid\u201d abortions after the roughly six-week ban\u2014 giving them at least $10,000 for each successful lawsuit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe state has put a bounty on the head of any person or entity who so much as gives a patient money for an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before most people know they are pregnant,\u201d Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) said in a statement. \u201cWorse, it will intimidate loved ones from providing support for fear of being sued.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similar laws:\u00a0<\/strong>The Texas law prohibits abortions after the presence of a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur as early as six weeks after a woman becomes pregnant, and only makes exceptions for medical emergencies.<\/p>\n Federal courts have blocked similar bills passed in other states, including North Dakota, Iowa, Kentucky and Mississippi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Abortion rights advocates filed a federal...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37623,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37622\/revisions\/37623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}