Newsfront
Texas Abortion Law Is Unique Because It Has to Be
People thought abortion was off -limits. It isn’t, says state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the author of the Heartbeat Act.
T BY BRYAN HUGHES
here has been so much ill- informed commentary on Texas Senate Bill 8, the Heart- beat Act, that I feel compelled
to explain its provisions and defend its logic. I am the author of the bill, which
Gov. Greg Abbott signed in May and which the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block in September. The law does not ban abortions after
six weeks. It requires that a physician performing an abortion fi rst check for a fetal heartbeat. If there is a heartbeat, the physician may not abort the child. When a physician performs an abor- tion without checking for a heartbeat,
or fi nds a heartbeat and performs the abortion anyway, he has performed an illegal abortion. Unlike other such laws passed in
other parts of the country, the Heart- beat Act does not empower any govern- mental authority to mete out punish- ment for the crime. Instead it decrees that the doctor may be sued for breaking the law. The mother cannot be sued, and
we have bolstered programs to support expectant mothers. Last year the state’s Alternatives to
Abortion program provided support to more than 100,000 pregnant women and adoptive parents through counsel- ing, classes, car seats, diapers, and other
necessities. This year we added more than $20
million to the program, bringing total funding to over $100 million. The law departs from conventional enforcement channels, obviously. Most 19th- and 20th-century abortion laws prohibited or regulated the practice in the traditional way. But that is much harder to do thanks
to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade deci- sion of 1973 — a ruling acknowledged even by liberal scholars to be a travesty of constitutional interpretation. One of the numerous unfortunate consequences of Roe is that many peo- ple mistakenly believe any regulation on abortion must be illegitimate. This is not so. The Supreme Court does not have the power to declare subjects off - limits to democratically elected legis- latures. Yet prosecutors from across the country have announced their refusal to enforce laws regulating abortion. If officials
sworn to enforce state laws pre- emptively decide they won’t do it, even when the laws are passed and ratifi ed and have not been challenged in the courts, state legis- lators are obliged to get creative. Someone who
COUNTERATTACK U.S Attorney General Merrick Garland is suing Texas, claiming the law is unconstitutional.
commits a crimi- nal assault may be sued in civil court for assault and battery (recall the civil O.J. Simp-
14 NEWSMAX | OCTOBER 2021
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