In almost every safe, legal abortion there is probably more than one person who could be defined as a “helper.” Just off the top of my head, I can think of doctors, nurses, receptionists, clinic escorts. The law even mentions insurance companies if they provide coverage (and I could see an argument that that would apply to more than just the actual procedure, since the bill also mandates that the doc performs an ultrasound to determine if a heartbeat is present). You have to get all of those people on board with the plan in order to make it work or you’re leaving a loophole for one of the bad actors to slip through.
Cost. Your hypothetical seems to imagine a closed system where the 10k is just moving in a frictionless circle, but I have to imagine that, even if you find an attorney who is willing to do the lawyering for free, there are other costs like court filing fees, etc that will cost something. Even a sham case is probably going to, at some point, require the involvement of outside people who want to get paid. I don’t know how much that cost will be, but you’d need to have some sort of budget to account for that.
Even if this works for some people in some situations, does this work on a large enough scale? If a clinic loses say 80% of it’s potential patients (because they cannot successfully pull off this plan), will the clinic be able to stay open?
[foil hat] How soon after you pull this off will a Project Veritas type organization start running sting operation where they do your plan but then don’t kick back the money to the helper? A clinic only has to have that happen one time before they stop agreeing to that process.
does she even have to have a miscarriage? what’s stopping people from just suing doctors they don’t like? It seems that the burden of proof is always on the accused and the accuser is 100% shielded from any consequences
One more question. How exactly are damages calculated?
Assuming the person who brings the suit is a nosy neighbor, do they just claim emotional suffering from knowing an abortion occurred? What does one do to get above the 10K minimum?
[Big disclaimer: I don’t practice in Texas or Colorado, and I’ve done a grand total of like 5 minutes of research so I’m not giving actual legal
advice here]
Based on a very quick read of this particular bill, it seems like you might be ok [b/c it does talk about the abortion being unlawful in Texas]. My big concern is that what makes an abortion “unlawful” is not defined just in this new bill. It’s also based on all the other Texas laws that regulate abortion.
So, if there is some other rule that, say, prohibits transporting a minor across state lines to get an abortion, or that says that a married woman has to notify her husband even if she goes to another state, you could be in trouble b/c you violated a Texas abortion law even though the abortion didn’t happen in Texas.
At the very least, it seems like someone who was going to be a helper in that situation would want to be prepared for the possibility of having to litigate some of these issues.
I’m not sure it can, but 1) the efficiency of the judicial system has not traditionally been a high priority for Republicans [except when they’re griping about the need for tort reform] and 2) I think the goal is less about actually having lots of lawsuits and more about using the threat of lawsuits to force clinics to shut down. In 5 years, if you told the average Republican legislator that only 20 lawsuits had been successfully resolved but half of the clinics in the state had shut down they’d consider the law a great success.
Perhaps most white women will simply get abortions out of state and the black and hispanic populations of the South will increase. Perhaps this will move 10% of old school GOP voters to dems. Maybe Republicans haven’t thought this through?
BTW, even if the SCt doesn’t overrule the Fifth Circuit and stay the law, there is already a Mississippi abortion case on the docket for next term and that will decide the broader issue, including in TX.
In the meantime NGOs should go nuts with distributing information in TX about acquiring abortion drugs. In some ways it seems to me that TX is trying to ban procedures that are increasingly less necessary in light of pharmacological developments. (I realize there is still a significant need for surgical abortions, but it’s a case where they are banning butter after margarine has become increasingly common–not a minor thing, but substitute goods are available).
Well, there can be websites (I’m sure there are) that offer information about and access to abortion drugs. Let the TX courts try to shut them down. That will be fun.
Basically, it looks like the dog has finally caught the car. However, after 4 years living in Trumplandia, my bet is only 85% on the car winning.
I do like a certain level of accelerationism. I think it’s something we need and will likely be helpful. This is the time for “fiscally conservative but liberal on social issues” bros to shine. Don’t let us down bros (they’ll probably let us down).
I do like the idea of convincing white supremacists that this is part of a broader plan for white replacement.
No point in the GOP being all in on Christian fundamentalism when it’s a declining share of voters. Sure, you can gerrymander and vote suppress for another election or two, but that doesn’t change the fundamentals. I mean they wouldn’t be trying to cheat if they weren’t losing.
I know, right? I mean, Fly made it pretty apparent to all of us that American libertarianism was always a front for racism, but those bros don’t even have to support legal weed to make their views seem palatable to polite society. Trump showed them they can just be massively racist in public and it’ll be fine.
This is why we need to push the narrative that this is a plan to create more black and brown babies! It’s nothing but the great replacement that was foretold.
rights.