They ask that Supreme Court intervene on abortions in Texas 1:32
(CNN) -
The United States Department of Justice will ask the Supreme Court to intervene and block a controversial Texas law that bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy while legal challenges are resolved, he said. Friday a department spokesman.
The petition will once again put judges at the center of the storm created by the abortion ban before most women know they are pregnant.
What is the Texas abortion ban about and why is it important?
The Justice Department did not say when it will make the formal request to the court.
On September 1, a deeply divided court allowed the Texas law to go into effect, as part of a different legal challenge presented by abortion providers.
That decision made Roe vs.
Wade in dead letter in the second largest state in the country.
Since then, other challenges to the law have been denied in court.
When the judges reconsider the law, they will review the record that details how the law has affected women and clinics in the past six weeks. In their affidavits, abortion providers say the law has had a chilling effect because staff are "beset by fear and instability," and that they "remain very concerned that even performing abortions in compliance with the law SB 8 may give rise to lawsuits by vigilantes against abortion or others seeking financial gain "under the provision of the law, which offers up to US $ 10,000 in damages .
Providers in neighboring states said under oath they have been overwhelmed by patients traveling from Texas seeking an abortion.
When Judge Robert Pitman of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas temporarily blocked the law last week, he said that from the time it went into effect, "women have been illegally prevented from exercise control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution. "
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And in a harsh warning to the Supreme Court, Pitman wrote: "That other courts may find a way to circumvent this conclusion is for them to decide; this court will not allow one more day the offensive deprivation of such an important right." .
However, the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals suspended Pitman's sentence, meaning the law is in effect for now.
The court rejected the Justice Department's request to lift the suspension Thursday night, laying the groundwork for the next fight in the Supreme Court.
A key question in the case is whether the federal government has the legal right or "standing" to file the challenge in question.
The Justice Department says it does, in part, because the individuals filing the lawsuit act as agents of the state, and the government has the power to protect the fundamental rights of its citizens.
But Texas Attorney General Republican Ken Paxton says the federal government has no right to intervene.
Paxton is based on a brief submitted by Jonathan Mitchell, one of the law's architects who now represents three people who are interested in filing lawsuits against those who may violate the law.
Mitchell wrote that states "have tools in their arsenal to limit the opportunities for the judiciary to declare their statutes unconstitutional."
Mitchell said states can structure their laws in ways that "reduce or eliminate" the possibility that the laws will be challenged before they go into effect.
"And that's what Texas did," he said.
"By prohibiting state officials from enforcing the law and empowering citizens to enforce it through private civil actions, Texas has prevented the judiciary from handling" those challenges.
Mitchell added that abortion "is not a constitutional right" but is "a right invented by the courts that may not even have the majority support of the current Supreme Court."
New US Supreme Court Mandate Could Produce Landmark Rulings on Abortion, Guns, Subsidies and More
The Supreme Court will examine a Mississippi law in December that prohibits the procedure after 15 weeks.
In that case, the state asks the court to vacate Roe v.
Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide before viability, which can occur around 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Neither Texas nor Mississippi law provides an exception for rape or incest.
Abortion in Texas
