Texas and other Republican-controlled states have used the legal language of safety regulations rather than religion to support their attempts to ban all abortion, but supporters of abortion bans aren't bound by the separation of church and state and their arguments are less coy about their intentions and motivations.
A federal judge recently ruled in favor of the Department of Justice by blocking the ban on virtually all abortions in Texas, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the lower court ruling and allowed the state to impose the ban.
The appeals court will soon decide if the ban should be temporarily blocked and lawyers for anti-abortion groups have filed a legal brief in support of Texas that argues the court has no actual authority.
From NBC News:
"The Supreme Court's interpretations of the Constitution are not the Constitution itself - they are, after all, called opinions. The federal and state political branches have every prerogative to adopt interpretations of the Constitution that differ from the Supreme Court's, and they have every prerogative to enact laws that deprive the judiciary of opportunities to consider pre-enforcement challenges to their statutes."
"Abortion is not a constitutional right; it is a court-invented right that may not even have majority support on the current Supreme Court," they said.
States don't violate the constitution "by undermining a 'right' that is nowhere to be found in the document, and that exists only as a concoction of judges who want to impose their ideology on the nation," they continued.
Can you even imagine going to law school, passing a bar exam, and becoming a lawyer just to figuratively stand in front of one of the highest courts in the land and argue that there's no such thing as established law? I mean, it must be news to the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court that they have no actual authority and their rulings are secondary at best. Why even have lawyers if this is all true? We can just rule by feudal edict.
My first reaction to this story was to laugh, of course, but then it occurred to me that there some sitting judges including on the Supreme Court that probably agree with this point of view with it suits them and disagree when it doesn't.
I have no idea how the Fifth Circuit will rule, but it's an ideologically stacked court and they may not necessarily care if the legal arguments filed in support of the abortion ban are entirely nonsensical.