Creative lawyering won’t be enough to override constitutionally protected rights.

By Noah Feldman, Bloomberg
May 25, 2021

When a state adopts a flatly unconstitutional anti-abortion law, as Texas did last week, it ordinarily never takes effect. Activists immediately ask a federal court to order state officials not to enforce it, and the court does. What’s unusual — and scary — is that this time, Texas is trying to get around this hurdle through legal trickery. Its efforts are likely to fail, but seeing how and why requires going through a bit of detail.

Start with Texas’s goal. The law just enacted makes abortion unlawful after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Because that can happen as early as six weeks of pregnancy, the law effectively outlaws abortion — a direct violation of the constitutional right to choose established in Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court has agreed to consider a case out of Mississippi in which it might overturn part of Roe. But until that happens, Roe is the law, and the Texas statute is certainly unconstitutional.

Continued: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-25/texas-abortion-ban-is-both-devious-and-doomed