Your daily dose of Austin
Every morning, we send you a free email packed with Austin news, business, and entertainment. Join 16,000+ readers who wake up to Austonia's newsletter.
×
Make your inbox more Austin.
Local news and fun, every day 6am.
Local news and fun, every day 6am.
abortion
Featured
austonia newsletter
Get connected with our daily update
Most viewed
(Tesla)
Tesla is covering travel costs for employees going out of state for abortions.
On Friday, the company released its impact report, which stated that since 2021, it has provided “an expanded Safety Net program and health insurance offering that includes travel and lodging support for those who may need to seek healthcare services that are unavailable in their home state," for employees.
According to the report, nearly a quarter, or 22%, of the company’s workers in the calendar year 2020 were female.
This report comes just after Politico published a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion on Monday indicating the high court intends to overturn Roe v. Wade. In Texas, a trigger law making abortion illegal would go into effect 30 days after its repeal. Nationwide protests have followed, including in Austin.
Just months before Tesla moved its headquarters from California to Austin late last year, Texas had enacted Senate Bill 8, which banned abortions after six weeks, before many know that they are pregnant.
With this offering, Tesla joins other Central Texas companies that have responded to abortion restrictions.
Dating app Bumble launched a fund in September to support access to abortion services and released a statement earlier this week saying they are “dismayed” by the Supreme Court’s draft decision. Amazon recently announced it will cover abortion-related travel costs for employees, though the benefit doesn’t extend to all workers, including those on “flex schedule” at the company’s warehouses or contract workers like delivery drivers and gig workers.
Citigroup also covers expenses for employees seeking out-of-state abortions. In March, Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, sent a letter to the company saying he would introduce legislation to bar local governments in Texas from doing business with companies that give travel benefits for employees seeking an abortion.
From Your Site Articles
- Tesla can't sell directly to Texans unless law is uplifted - austonia ›
- Who will be attending the Giga Texas grand opening - austonia ›
- Tesla 2021 year in review for austin - austonia ›
- Elon Musk announces April 7 grand opening party for Giga Texas ... ›
- Tickets go on sale for Tesla Con Texas - austonia ›
- PHOTOS: Peek inside the Tesla Gigafactory producing Model Ys in ... ›
- Tesla's new giga texas belt buckle sells out in less than 24 hrs ... ›
- Excitement over Giga Texas opening continues at Tesla Con ... ›
- Del valle ISD partners with Tesla in high school grad program ... ›
Keep Reading
Show less
Popular
(Kaylee Greenlee Beal/The Texas Tribune)
By Reese Oxner
At a time when Texas is poised to outlaw the vast majority of abortions if the nation’s highest court overturns constitutional protections for the procedure, a recent University of Texas at Austin poll shows most Texan voters think access to abortion should be allowed in some form.
Texas would make performing most abortions a felony if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade — a future that looks considerably more likely after a nonbinding draft opinion was leaked from the high court Monday. Constitutional protections for abortion could be struck down as soon as this summer.
The university conducted the poll in April before the court’s document was leaked. The survey found that 78% of respondents believe abortion should be allowed in some form while only 15% said it should be never permitted.
If Roe is overturned, Texas would allow doctors to perform abortions only to save the life of a pregnant person or if that person risked “substantial impairment of major bodily function.” There would be no exception if someone got pregnant from rape or incest.
Around 39% of poll respondents said Texans should always be able to obtain abortions as a matter of personal choice, and 11% of respondents thought abortions should be available for other reasons in addition to pregnancy resulting from rape.
The poll shows that 28% of respondents believe abortions should be available only in cases of rape or incest or when a person’s life is endangered by their pregnancy. And 7% said they didn’t know.
Respondents fell mostly along party lines. Of the Republicans surveyed, 42% said abortions should be allowed only in cases of rape, incest or when a person’s life is in danger. The majority of Democrat respondents — 67% — said Texans should be allowed to seek an abortion as a personal choice.
But there were outliers. Among Republicans, 15% said Texans should always be allowed to seek an abortion and 12% said the law should allow Texans to seek abortions for reasons outside of just rape. On the flip side, 5% of Democrats said abortion should be completely outlawed and 13% said it should be allowed only in cases of rape or incest.
Texas is one of 13 states with so-called trigger laws that would automatically go into effect to ban abortions if Roe is overturned.
Texans have experienced a preview of a post-Roe America for the last eight months. The state has been under the nation’s most restrictive abortion law, which bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, since September. The ban is able to skirt protections on abortion access by relying on private lawsuits for enforcement rather than on state officials. Critics say the law creates “bounty hunters” because it allows anyone to file a lawsuit and seek damages of at least $10,000 — even if they lack a connection to the person seeking an abortion. Abortion rights advocates have unsuccessfully challenged the ban in both state and federal courts.
But now, much of Texas’ controversial abortion law could be rendered moot as the impending Supreme Court ruling puts the right to a legal abortion in jeopardy.
“For months, Texans have had to navigate a six-week abortion ban and bounty law that has upended access to essential care,” Ana Ramón, interim executive director of the progressive political action committee Annie’s List, said in a statement. “[The Supreme Court’s] draft majority opinion confirms what we’ve anticipated all along: the end of our guaranteed right to abortion is imminent.”
Keep Reading
Show less
Abortion opponents and abortion rights activists protest outside the Supreme Court building ahead of arguments in the Mississippi abortion rights case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 1, 2021. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)
By Reese Oxner
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the legal challenge brought forward by abortion providers against Texas’ abortion restriction law may continue, bringing new life into what has become the most significant effort to overturn the statute so far.
The court allowed the suit to continue on a 8-1 decision but did not stop the law’s enforcement. Instead, abortion providers will resume seeking to block the law as it progresses through lower court proceedings.
In a separate decision, the court dismissed a separate challenge from the Biden administration.
The justices also allowed the abortion providers to sue only some state licensing officials, but namely not state court clerks — citing difficulties surrounding sovereign immunity. This could make it difficult for providers to get the law’s enforcement blocked overall in court.
This win for abortion providers could be short-lived as the Supreme Court considers a case from Mississippi that could put an end to constitutional protections on abortions. They are set to rule on that case next summer.
The high court handed down the decision in the Texas case five weeks after justices heard oral arguments over the law on Nov. 1. Abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy have been virtually banned in Texas for over 100 days since the law went into effect on Sept. 1.
“The legal back and forth has been excruciating for our patients and heartbreaking for our staff. We know this decision isn’t the end and our fight against this law is not over,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health and Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, said in a statement. “Whole Woman’s Health is here for the long haul and we look forward to resuming the full scope of abortion care we are trained to provide.”
The ruling comes a day after a state district judge agreed with 14 abortion advocates and declared that the Texas law violates the state’s Constitution, though he didn’t stop it from being enforced. That ruling would likely be used as precedent in individual lawsuits filed under the statute.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a lawsuit that came after Mississippi passed a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. While the Texas case before the high court focused on the validity of the unique enforcement mechanism used by the state’s abortion law, the Mississippi case puts constitutional protections for abortion access into question — and many court observers believe the justices are poised to roll back those protections.
The Supreme Court currently has a conservative supermajority, with six out of nine justices appointed by Republican presidents. Those conservative members have historically shared anti-abortion positions and, during oral arguments for the Mississippi case, they seemed open to at least partly overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that helped establish constitutional protections for abortions.
If that happens, it would mean the end of legal abortions in Texas. That’s because the Texas Legislature passed a “trigger” law this year that would automatically come into effect if Roe is “wholly or partly” overturned. It would also render much of the fight over the Texas abortion law moot.
The Supreme Court on Friday also ruled on a separate case filed against Texas’ abortion law brought forward by the U.S. Justice Department. In that case, the high court found that the DOJ does not have standing to sue Texas over its abortion law, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 8. The court effectively ended the lawsuit and the Biden administration’s role in the judicial battle over the controversial law, saying it was “improvidently granted.”
The abortion providers’ lawsuit, led by Whole Woman’s Health, aims to topple the enforcement mechanism of the law. That mechanism was the focus of oral arguments in the Supreme Court’s Nov. 1 hearing of the case.
The two separate suits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and abortion providers had brought Texas’ abortion law back before the high court months after the justices had declined to grant an emergency relief request by abortion providers seeking to stay the law while it was challenged in court.
The high court’s decision Friday was not on the law’s overall constitutionality, but rather on the procedural woes that plagued legal efforts to challenge it. During the arguments, six out of nine Supreme Court justices expressed concerns specifically over the way Texas enforces the law — and the way it could be used to limit other constitutional rights.
“There’s a loophole that's been exploited here,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said during the Nov. 1 hearing. “It could be free speech rights. It could be free exercise of religion rights. It could be Second Amendment rights — if this position is accepted here.”
Texas’ law, which bars abortions before many know they’re pregnant, had been successful in blocking procedures in the state by using the unique tactic. Its enforcement mechanism has allowed the law to buck judicial review by making it difficult to sue the law’s enforcers, which is the traditional route to stop a law from going into effect.
Courts, to block laws, typically order state officials to not enforce them. But that’s impossible under Texas’ abortion law, which made private citizens the de facto enforcers of the law by empowering them to sue those who “aid or abet” abortions past around six weeks of gestation — and promises them $10,000 if they win their lawsuit.
Melissa Murray, a professor at the New York University School of Law, said the Supreme Court’s decision Friday was likely made more on the idea that “everyone should be concerned about the implications of this kind of enforcement mechanism on the rule of law more generally — not just specifically on abortion.”
From Your Site Articles
- Most restrictive abortion law in U.S. affects Texas women - austonia ›
- Politicians criticize Abbott's plan to 'eliminate rape' in wake of new ... ›
- The Supreme Court will hear arguments over Texas' near-total ... ›
- Texas' growth may be slowed by abortion ban, poll reports - austonia ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep Reading
Show less
