The Insidious Procedural Traps of the Texas Abortion Law

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

The new Texas law Senate Bill 8 effectively outlaws abortion in Texas, violating constitutional protections on reproductive rights. Yet the Supreme Court is in no rush to review it. The law professor and staff writer Jeannie Suk Gersen speaks with Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan. They examine the novel ways in which the law insulates itself from judicial review. “It seems like the Texas law is an onion, with layers upon layers of unconstitutionality,” Suk Gersen notes. “It’s basically saying to the courts, ‘We’ll do your job for you. You are cut out of this.’ ” Plus, Jia Tolentino talks with the pop musician Caroline Polachek, as the singer-songwriter gets ready to play her first live concert since March of 2020, for the biggest crowd of her career.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:11.8	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For so many years, the Christian Right and other anti-abortion
0:22.7	constituencies made overturning Roe versus Wade their goal, their endgame. And with three
0:29.1	appointments to the Supreme Court, Donald Trump delivered to those voters. Even still, overturning
0:36.7	row flat out is a line that the court may not be ready to cross.
0:41.1	Instead, anti-abortion forces have devised a strategy of undermining Roe.
0:46.7	The Texas abortion law, Senate Bill 8, is already being studied by other states,
0:52.2	and the Supreme Court is reviewing a separate law in
0:54.5	Mississippi that also bans abortions before fetal viability. It seems entirely possible now
1:01.3	that American women could lose reproductive choice in nearly every Republican-controlled state,
1:07.1	row or no row. Jeannie Suk Gerson is a professor of law at Harvard University and a contributing writer for the New Yorker.
1:15.8	She recently spoke with Leah Littman, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Michigan
1:21.1	Law School.
1:22.8	So, Leah, last week in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court refused to stop Senate Bill 8 or SB 8 from going
1:31.4	into effect. What's in that Texas law? So the big part that is substantive of the Texas law is,
1:40.8	it says abortions performed more than six weeks after a person's last period are prohibited.
1:48.1	What is quite novel about the law is it allows anyone, literally anyone in Texas, to sue either an abortion
1:57.6	provider who performs an abortion on someone more than six weeks after their last
2:02.5	period, or to sue anyone who assists a person in obtaining an abortion more than six weeks after
2:10.0	their last period.
2:11.5	So this idea of giving private citizens the power to enforce the law is part of what makes
2:17.3	SB 8 so unusual.
	...

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