Sure, there's a deadly pandemic sweeping the globe but that won't stop Republican lawmakers from trying to ban abortion or, in this case, even using the pandemic to justify banning abortion.
Republican officials in multiple states have used that stay-at-home orders to ban abortion by declaring that abortion is not an "essential" service, but judges in multiple states blocked several of the bans yesterday.
The Texas lawsuit was filed last Wednesday after clinics said they were forced to cancel hundreds of appointments for abortions across the state.
Abortion providers in Ohio, Iowa, Alabama and Oklahoma filed similar litigation on Monday to block state officials from using coronavirus-related orders to limit abortion availability.
Judges in Ohio and Alabama issued orders later on Monday blocking the states from enforcing the coronavirus-related restrictions against abortion providers.
Pregnancy is both life-changing and potentially life-threatening and that actually makes it far more "essential" than most procedures especially during a deadly pandemic that has already changed life as we know it.
Pregnancy and abortion are also time sensitive and that's especially true in these same states that have imposed various time restrictions and tightened the window of legal opportunity to obtain an abortion.
The idea that abortion services will somehow materially drain critical resources during the pandemic is clearly a bad faith embellishment particularly in the state of Texas where so few clinics remain in operation and the outbreak has not become acute yet. And even in the event that Texas becomes the next epicenter of the pandemic, that wouldn't justify throwing women under the bus.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton -- who was indicted for securities fraud because he lobbied fellow lawmakers into buying phony stocks -- has already appealed the ruling.