SCOTUS HAS DENIED ABORTION ACCESS TO TEXANS FOR 200 DAYS

We must expand the Court to restore our rights

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (March 18, 2022) — On September 1, 2021, Texas’ unconstitutional S.B. 8 halted abortion access for millions of Americans. That means as of this Sunday, March 20th, Texans will have been denied access to abortion for 200 days. That’s more than six months without access to vital care. 

Just this week, Idaho leaders — having seen the Supreme Court permit Texas’ harmful law — passed their own anti-abortion bill. And in the months since S.B. 8 has remained in effect, state lawmakers in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and South Dakota have introduced copycat legislation (in some cases going even further in extremity than Texas’ law). 

Take Back the Court Director Sarah Lipton-Lubet said, “This Sunday is a chilling marker — for 200 days, the stolen Supreme Court has denied Texans their fundamental right to access abortion by refusing to block S.B. 8. The Court’s conservative justices have robbed countless people of their own bodily autonomy, and offered their blessing to legislation with frightening national implications.

“It’s long been clear that the Court has its sights set on making Texas the model for the rest of the country, so millions more Americans will also be forced to follow the will of a few unelected extremists on the bench rather than deciding their own futures. Every day this cruel law remains in place causes more harm — and serves as a painful reminder of just how little the ill-gotten right-wing Court represents the public.

“We can’t allow this extremist Court to keep making Texans’ — and all Americans’ — lives collateral in its effort to enact a backwards right-wing agenda. To restore our rights, we need to immediately reverse the theft of our nation’s highest bench and expand the Court.”