The legal battle over Texas' abortion law continues.
On Monday, the Biden government asked the Supreme Court to block this text which prohibits abortion as soon as the embryo's heartbeat is detectable, beyond about six weeks of pregnancy.
The law in question does not provide any exemption in cases of rape or incest.
Read also United States: the battle for the right to abortion takes to the streets
The objective of this referral: definitively block the application of the text considered "
clearly unconstitutional
" by the Biden government. In the United States, it is the iconic Roe v. Wade of January 22, 1973 which guarantees the right of women to abort as long as the fetus is not viable, i.e. around 22 weeks of pregnancy. But the Texas law introduces a unique device: it entrusts “
exclusively
” to the citizens the care of enforcing the text, in particular by denouncing. The text encourages Texans to file a complaint against organizations or people who help women to have illegal abortions.
It is this same device that led the judges of the Supreme Court to refuse to rule for the first time, at the beginning of September.
The Court, mainly composed of conservative judges, had invoked "
new questions of procedure
" preventing it from blocking the entry into force of the law in early September.
Hope then suspension
Since then, the situation has changed slightly.
First, on October 6, when Robert Pitman, a federal trial judge, suspended the text.
"
This court will not allow this shocking deprivation of such an important right to continue one more day
," he said.
The announcement had raised a lot of hope among abortion activists in the United States, and a few clinics had even resumed interventions beyond six weeks.
Read alsoTexas seeks to ban abortion
But, just two days after the suspension, the case is experiencing a new twist: a Louisiana appeals court overturns Judge Pitman's decision.
The Texas law, signed by the very conservative Governor Greg Abbott is therefore, since that date, again in force.
The Biden administration's demand for the Supreme Court is pretty clear: to restore Justice Pitman's ruling for good.
The high court could act in the coming days or weeks.
But the composition of the Supreme Court has not changed.
At this stage, it is therefore difficult to anticipate its decision.
This fall, the Supreme Court will also have to consider an abortion law, but in Mississippi this time: the state would like to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.