The Department of Justice is planning to take Texas to court over its restrictive and controversial abortion law that went into effect on Sept. 1 after the conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority opted not to act.
Heralded by conversations in Texas and nationwide, the law prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, no matter the situation, including rape.
In response to the country's highest court's ruling, Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Texas on Sept. 9.
“This kind of scheme to nullify the Constitution of the United States is one that all Americans, whatever their politics or party, should fear,” Garland said, the Texas Tribune reported.
Many other challenges to the bill have been turned down due to the design of the law, and the announcement comes after health care providers, abortion rights advocates and lawmakers called for the Biden administration to act.
Under a federal law called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, the Texas Tribune reported that Garland said the Justice Department would “protect those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services.”
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances 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 or to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship."
At least 13 Republican-led states have adopted restrictive abortion bills in the past, but courts have blocked them from going into effect. The difference between those failed pieces of legislation and Texas' law is using private citizens to enforce the mandate by filing lawsuits against anyone helping someone get an abortion.
Democrats and women’s rights advocates call the new bill an unconstitutional assault on women’s health.
Though the law is known as the “fetal heartbeat bill,” experts say it’s not actually a heartbeat that’s first detected. Technology can detect the first flutter of electric activity within cells in an embryo as early as six weeks, but the flutter is not actually a heartbeat. An embryo is considered a fetus after the eighth week of pregnancy, and the actual heart doesn’t begin to form until the ninth and 12th weeks of pregnancy.