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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe TX "Abortion Law". This I don't get:
How can strangers have standing to sue the patient, the doctors, the nurses, the receptionists, the bus drivers, etc.?
I could understand a husband, a boyfriend, someone with a biological connection having standing.
How do these plaintiffs make it to Round 2 when a motion for dismissal on the basis of standing is made?
Wouldn't that destroy the concept of American jurisprudence if anyone could sue anybody without a gatekeeper?
Takket
(21,578 posts)they have standing because the law says they do.
I don't know the answer to your second question.
But the third question is a resounding YES. This is one of the most blatantly unconstitutional laws ever written because it basically says "We the legislative branch are sick of judicial over-site, so we're erasing you from the equation". The Texas law on its own is horrific but the potential for copycat laws is also terrible. Soon you could sue someone for being an atheist or gay or anything else the right doesn't like.
Should be a 9-0 "fuck this" from SCOTUS but these days? who knows.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)ymetca
(1,182 posts)that about sums it up. A legal quagmire. Meanwhile, the Texas legislature is busy trying to outlaw the morning after pill.
Tyranny by proxy, it is .. aka "mob rule".
I sure wish these Jesus-bot end-timers would slither back into their compounds and leave the rest of us the hell alone!
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,862 posts)Have you ever been pregnant and the fetus diagnosed with a condition incompatible with life?
Have you ever tried to leave an abusive relationship and then learned you were pregnant?
Has your birth control ever failed?
Did a partner ever lie to you about being infertile?
Have you ever been pregnant from rape? Incest?
How many babies have you adopted?
Do you support free medical care for all pregnant women? For all children?
There must be a few more to ask; they just don't come to mind immediately. I would especially ask the first ones of men. They don't get off the hook just because they can't get pregnant.
As far as I'm concerned the issue is very simple: If you don't believe in abortion, then don't have one. Otherwise shut the fuck up and get out of the way.
Septua
(2,256 posts)Otherwise shut the fuck up and get out of the way...
LonePirate
(13,426 posts)The intent is to bankrupt or financially destroy any woman who receives an abortion along with any facility or person who provides. The defendants (the women, their assistants, the doctors, health care providers, etc.) are either subject to the $10K fine if found liable or their own court costs if found not liable due to a clause that says plaintiffs do not have to pay defendants' court costs if the plaintiffs lose.
So abortion is not outlawed but it made to be so financially disastrous for anyone involved that the medical procedure will cease to occur as a result.
I fully expect SCOTUS to declare the Texas law to be legal so our only recourse is for blue states to adopt the same sort of law for guns, be it with insurance or ammo or whatever) and force a future SCOTUS to overturn all of these bounty laws because the right wingers will pass many, many more of these for a whole host of issues once SCOTUS gives their approval.
Zeitghost
(3,862 posts)Last edited Sun Dec 12, 2021, 01:36 PM - Edit history (1)
They will gut or completely toss Roe in the Mississippi case and then nullify the Texas law because as you suggest, the private enforcement aspect cuts both ways and could easily be used to facilitate things like gun control.
Zeitghost
(3,862 posts)Explicitly grants them standing.
no_hypocrisy
(46,130 posts)Federal Rules of Civil Procedure apply to every case in every state. And standing is one subject that the USSC has struck down cases in the past on procedure, not substance. Either you have standing or you don't.
Standing (law): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)#:~:text=In%20law%2C%20standing%20or%20locus,party%27s%20participation%20in%20the%20case.
In law, standing or locus standi is a condition that a party seeking a legal remedy must show they have, by demonstrating to the court, sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case. A party has standing in the following situations:
The party is directly subject to an adverse effect by the statute or action in question, and the harm suffered will continue unless the court grants relief in the form of damages or a finding that the law either does not apply to the party or that the law is void or can be nullified. This is called the "something to lose" doctrine, in which the party has standing because they will be directly harmed by the conditions for which they are asking the court for relief.
The party is not directly harmed by the conditions by which they are petitioning the court for relief but asks for it because the harm involved has some reasonable relation to their situation, and the continued existence of the harm may affect others who might not be able to ask a court for relief. In the United States, this is the grounds for asking for a law to be struck down as violating the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, because while the plaintiff might not be directly affected, the law might so adversely affect others that one might never know what was not done or created by those who fear they would become subject to the law. This is known as the "chilling effects" doctrine.
The party is granted automatic standing by act of law.[1] Under some environmental laws in the United States, a party may sue someone causing pollution to certain waterways without a federal permit, even if the party suing is not harmed by the pollution being generated. The law allows the plaintiff to receive attorney's fees if they substantially prevail in the action. In some U.S. states, a person who believes a book, film or other work of art is obscene may sue in their own name to have the work banned directly without having to ask a District Attorney to do so.
Zeitghost
(3,862 posts)It's that some environmental laws uses the same legal concept of giving the general public standing through statute when they would not otherwise be able to claim it.
walkingman
(7,628 posts)for the government to control over a woman's body. If you don't want an abortion then don't get one but it certainly is no one's business what another person chooses in that regard.
If this is a religious decision then it is personal not everyone has the same beliefs.
As far as why Texas did this - it was strictly to garner the religious vote - they really could care less about anything other than control - which I think is the goal of religion itself.