Over the weekend and today there’s been a lot of activity around the lawsuit filed to stop SB 8, Texas’s 6-week abortion ban. It can be hard to keep up with cases like this one as they move through the courts, so we wanted to catch you up so you know exactly what’s happening.
The case to block the law was filed on July 13th. A hearing was scheduled for August 30th to determine if the federal district court would grant a preliminary injunction to stop the law from going into effect on September 1st while the case to overturn the law continued. But over the weekend, the Fifth Circuit court issued an order stopping all proceedings in the federal district court, including this hearing. That means that as it stands right now, the 6-week abortion ban is set to go into effect Wednesday. But today, the plaintiffs (that’s us and our partners at other abortion funds, providers, and clergy who filed the lawsuit) filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court of the United States to block the law from going into effect on Wednesday and allow the district court proceedings regarding the lawsuit to continue.
This probably still feels like A LOT, but the tl;dr is: We’re waiting for SCOTUS to determine whether or not the law goes into effect on Wednesday and to let the federal district court to continue hearing the case to overturn SB 8.
We’ll keep you updated as things change. But if you’re a young person in Texas seeking information and support for accessing abortion, don’t hesitate to call us at 866-999-5263.
