While the issue of abortion is certainly a spicy debate topic here in America, the idea of states’ rights can also foment a great deal of angst among the electorate. Combined, these two subjects have the potential to erupt into some heavy conflict.
That is precisely what Texans are beginning to worry about now, as their recently-imposed abortion law comes under attack from the Biden administration.
The U.S. Department of Justice late Tuesday asked a federal judge in Texas to temporarily halt the controversial new state law that bans abortions after about six weeks.
The emergency motion seeking a temporary restraining order comes days after the DOJ sued Texas over the law, claiming it was enacted to “prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights.”
The law went into effect on Sept. 1 after being upheld in a 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. It is the strictest abortion law in the country. Critics say many women don’t yet know they’re pregnant at six weeks – around the time when a fetal heartbeat can first be detected – and the law makes no exceptions for rape or incest.
And it certainly seems as if the DOJ could be interested in the case.
“It’s clearly unconstitutional,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said last Thursday. “The obvious and expressly acknowledged intention of this statutory scheme is to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights.”
The nation’s attention will likely swivel toward states’ rights, as the perceived overreach of the federal government harkens back to the American Civil War, in which states argued that they had the right to allow slavery as Washington continued to batter them over it.
