Texas abortion law includes bounty system

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The San Francisco experiment is quite a lot more complicated than that and I would take San Francisco over neighbors spying on me in hopes of winning a civil settlement any day.

It really is getting difficult to believe this is all one country, isn't it?

The law was designed that way so as to not give anyone legal standing to sue, making it much harder to challenge in court. The way it's written, the state is not the one enforcing the law, so anyone wishing to file a lawsuit over it has to sue the individual who brought the action against them for the bounty, it's quite deviously ingenious in how it was structured.

Ingenious but also disastrous. This is a can of worms our country will live to regret opening. Absolute insanity IMHO, but also what happens when people are driven by a theological goal instead of pragmatism. The right to life political movement is so far off the rails from the more comprehensive goal "right to life" is supposed to have that I just can't deal with them anymore. I am personally pro-life, but there are compassionate ways to achieve that goal that do not involve putting any third parties into women's private lives. The annoying thing is that states like Texas just want nothing to do with the types of programs which are PROVEN to work because they conflict with their other political goals. I'm furious.

Texas is at war against women’s reproductive rights, and turning its citizens into an army.

The state’s new anti-abortion law, which goes into effect today, bans all abortions—including in pregnancies resulting from rape or incest—as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected. This occurs around six weeks after conception, or before many women would even know they are pregnant. The only exception to the rule is a medical emergency.

This is the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the country, and one of the most extreme in the world. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had asked the Supreme Court an emergency ruling to block the law, but the court didn’t respond.

An army of anti-abortion vigilantes
Making the law even more extraordinary, the power of enacting the ban isn’t in the state’s hands, but in those of its citizens.

According to the law, private citizens can sue the physician who performed an abortion after the sixth week, as well as anyone who helped facilitate it, from counselors to anyone providing financial support for the procedure to someone who simply drove the woman to the clinic with the knowledge that she was getting an abortion.

The complainant can receive up to $10,000 in damage compensation if the accused is found guilty, on top of any legal fees, even if they don’t have any connection with the woman who received the abortion. Depending on the verdict, the court could enforce the collection of the debt, which could include seizing property if the person found guilty doesn’t have sufficient available funds to pay.

This means that, as of today, every Texan has a financial incentive to track down almost any abortion, since at least two-thirds of all abortions occur after the sixth week.


Since it isn’t the government suing the patient, the law does not fall under the protections established by Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision which forbids the states from imposing restrictions on abortion at least until the fetus is viable and can survive out of the uterus.

The goal, as expressly stated by the proponent of the law, is to put anyone providing, or helping abortions after the sixth week under the threat of a deluge of lawsuits, making it financially unsustainable to maintain an abortion practice. Even if the providers won in court, and could demonstrate they didn’t perform the abortion after six weeks, the time and money required to sustain the suits could still be too much to bear.

The Supreme Court might still block the law as unconstitutional, but until it does, it is likely other conservative states will try and emulate the Texas model.

According to the latest data available, as of 2017 there were 35 abortion-providing facilities in Texas, of which 28 were clinics. As the law comes into effect, all of them—including Planned Parenthood—have stopped providing abortion services after the sixth week, and a majority of them might be forced to close.

I am glad that my fellow Texans have banned abortion in the great state of Texas.Babies are a gift from God.

A few things you may not be aware of:
1. Data shows that the most effective way to save the lives of the unborn is NOT by making abortion illegal, but by providing more affordable, accessible, and comprehensive healthcare. There is no justifiable reason, therefore, to bring the law into what are often difficult and complicated medical decisions (you can't think of abortions as purely elective; that isn't the reality).

2. The enforcement mechanism in the law is problematic, and likely to drive many obstetricians out of business and/or out of the specialty. I've detailed out how I concluded that on my personal FB page but it's too long to repeat here. Fewer doctors means fewer women will get the healthcare they need while pregnant, and more babies and mothers will die or suffer serious health issues. Pregnancy is risky business. Women need good doctors.

3. The enforcement mechanism in the law can and will be copied by states eager to make end-runs around other federal implementations and interpretations of constitutional protections. This is not good. It's a can of worms.

Ingenious but also disastrous. This is a can of worms our country will live to regret opening. Absolute insanity IMHO, but also what happens when people are driven by a theological goal instead of pragmatism. The right to life political movement is so far off the rails from the more comprehensive goal "right to life" is supposed to have that I just can't deal with them anymore. I am personally pro-life, but there are compassionate ways to achieve that goal that do not involve putting any third parties into women's private lives. The annoying thing is that states like Texas just want nothing to do with the types of programs which are PROVEN to work because they conflict with their other political goals. I'm furious.

And there have already been lawsuits.

This is what happens when people vote for candidates based on the number of times they “menshun Gawd”, rather than how they can improve peoples’ lives.

And there have already been lawsuits.

This is what happens when people vote for candidates based on the number of times they “menshun Gawd”, rather than how they can improve peoples’ lives.