The Supreme Court has voted 5-4 in favor of the passing of a more restrictive abortion law in Texas late Wednesday. The so-called "Heartbeat" law will immediately take effect Thursday.
Chief Justice John Roberts and three Democratic appointees to the Supreme Court - Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Elena Kagan - voted against the passing of the more restrictive abortion law.
Under the new law, abortions after six weeks of pregnancy are now illegal. Doctors are also prohibited from performing an abortion if they are able to detect a fetal heartbeat from the unborn child, hence the law's name.
Private citizens can also now file civil lawsuits against facilities and individuals that provide the service to women more than six weeks pregnant. If a facility or an individual is found guilty of performing an abortion on a woman more than six weeks pregnant or after the detection of a heartbeat, the facility or individual could be liable for statutory damages of at least $10,000 per abortion.
Critics of the abortion law said most women won't really know if they are pregnant before six weeks. They said the restriction simply doesn't give women enough time to make a decision and in some cases, the law now makes that decision impossible.
Sotomayor expressed her disappointment in the passing of the law, a decision she described as "stunning" and a mockery of nearly "50 years of federal precedents. The bill was initially signed into law in May by Republican Governor Greg Abbot.
"Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand," Sotomayor said after the voting.
Earlier in the week, women's rights advocates and a group of abortion providers filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court to block the passing of the law. The petition cited that the passing of such a law would overturn the precedent made in the landmark 1973 case of Roe v. Wade. The case has repeatedly been used by women's rights groups as the hallmark case for the right to choose an abortion.
