Officials with Texas right to Life didn’t mince words today when it comes to Joe Biden after his administration announced it was planning to file a lawsuit against the Texas abortion ban that has been saving babies from abortion.
As LifeNews.com reported, Biden’s administration is preparing a lawsuit against the state of Texas to overturn its abortion ban that is saving the lives of unborn babies. Today is the 9th day the Texas abortion ban is protecting babies from abortion, but the “devout Catholic” has been a radical abortion activist as president and the Justice Department is putting together legal documents to try to get the courts to overturn the law.
The Texas heartbeat law went into effect Sept. 1, prohibiting abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable, about six weeks of pregnancy. The U.S. Supreme Court refused Planned Parenthood’s and other pro-abortion groups’ request to temporarily block enforcement of the law. However, the court battle is not over.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement late Monday that the DOJ was “urgently” exploring all options to potentially challenge the pro-life Texas law in court, and the actual filing of the suit is expected today.
In response, Texas Right to Life Vice President Elizabeth Graham took Biden to task.
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“Joe Biden has a long record of failures with protecting the unborn and pregnant women. He is a puppet of the radical abortion agenda, and his DOJ will quickly find that they do not have jurisdiction to stop the Texas Heartbeat Act,” she said.
Graham told LifeNews that Biden “failed to argue on what grounds they will challenge the law. Their approach is especially flawed since the government of Texas has no authority to enforce the law. Instead, private citizens are responsible for holding abortionists accountable to the policy.”
“The Texas Heartbeat Act protects children from abortion from the time they have a detectable heartbeat, around six weeks’ gestation. Unlike other states’ heartbeat policies, the Texas Heartbeat Act is enforced by private citizens who can sue abortionists for killing preborn children in violation of the law,” she added. “The Biden administration’s ploy represents a desperate attempt to stop the life-saving law by any means necessary. The DOJ will likely grasp at new creative complaints against the law not addressed in previous lawsuits.”
“Pro-abortion activists have presented Biden’s efforts as restoring “women’s rights.” On the contrary, the Texas Heartbeat Act advances women’s rights because people have the right to their own bodies from the moment their bodies first exist in the womb,” Graham added. “Texans have been calling for stronger Pro-Life measures to protect preborn babies and provide real resources to pregnant mothers. The Texas Heartbeat Act is the next logical step in protecting children from the violence of abortion and defending the most vulnerable in our society.”
She concluded: “Texas Right to Life will not be intimidated by the empty threats of the Biden administration. Additionally, we’ve already started working with other states to pass versions of the Texas Heartbeat Act. The life-saving law rescues an estimated 100 preborn babies a day from death by abortion.”
The grounds for the lawsuit have not been established, but a Wall Street Journal report indicates the Biden administration will “pursue an argument that the Texas law illegally interferes with federal interests” even though there is no federal interest in killing babies and no federal law allowing abortions.
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The Biden administration also appeared to be making the convoluted argument that the Texas abortion ban is somehow a violation of a federal law passed during the Clinton administration that prohibits violent activities outside abortion centers. But the Texas law and its allowance of private citizens to enforce the law via lawsuits against abortionists and those who assist them in killing babies in no way engages in any violent actions, as the violence takes place inside the abortion center.
Garland said, “While the Justice Department urgently explores all options to challenge Texas SB8 in order to protect the constitutional rights of women and other persons, including access to an abortion, we will continue to protect those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services pursuant to our criminal and civil enforcement of the FACE Act, 18 U.S.C. § 248.”
“The FACE Act prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services,” the statement continued. “It also prohibits intentional property damage of a facility providing reproductive health services. The department has consistently obtained criminal and civil remedies for violations of the FACE Act since it was signed into law in 1994, and it will continue to do so now.”
Even a law professor told The Hill that the Biden administration has no solid argument to overturn the law.
“The ability of the Justice Department is really quite limited here. All of the possible actions I can think of, and there may be some I can’t, would require an actual case to happen first,” said Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former U.S. attorney during the Obama administration.
“By crowd sourcing the enforcement, you’ve created this kind of vague class of defendants to be sued,” McQuade added, noting that there can’t be a defendant until a lawsuit is filed.
The Texas pro-life law is already saving babies from abortion. San Antonio, Texas has four abortion facilities, but only one has been in operation since the new heartbeat law went into effect last week. The fourth abortion facility, Alamo Women’s Clinic, appears to still be aborting unborn babies up to about six weeks of pregnancy when the baby’s heartbeat is detectable, according to its website. Before the law went into effect, however, it used to abort unborn babies all the way up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Through the Texas heartbeat law and other measures, the state is working to protect and empower mothers and babies. In 2020, about 54,000 unborn babies were aborted in Texas, and about 85 percent happened after six weeks of pregnancy, according to state health statistics. With the heartbeat law in effect, tens of thousands of babies could be spared from abortion every year in Texas.
Meanwhile, pro-life advocates are reaching out to pregnant women across Texas with compassion and understanding, offering resources and emotional support to help them and their babies. Earlier this year, state lawmakers increased support for pregnant and parenting mothers and babies, ensuring that they have resources to choose life for their babies.
Unique from other state heartbeat laws, the Texas law includes a private enforcement mechanism that allows people to file lawsuits against abortionists who violate the law and those who help them.
It is these lawsuits and the risk of financial loss that are deterring the abortion industry from breaking the law.
Chelsey Youman, the Texas state director of Human Coalition, told News 4 that the goal of the pro-life movement is to support mothers and babies, not just to ban abortions.
“Our organizations will continue to advocate for a society where women and their children thrive without abortion,” Youman said.
Whether the Texas law will remain in effect or ultimately be upheld as constitutional in court remains uncertain, but pro-life leaders are hopeful now that the Supreme Court has a conservative majority.
