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The Supreme Court yesterday let stand a lower court ruling that permits a near total ban on emergency abortions in Texas, despite federal law requiring hospitals to perform emergency abortions even in states where it is banned, rejecting an appeal from the Biden-Harris administration. 

Texas’ near-total abortion ban, reinforced by the Supreme Court, was originally propped up by the far-right 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling, where the bench is stocked with right-wing judges hand-picked by conservative kingmaker Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society. 

Meanwhile, right-wing and Leo-affiliated groups are spearheading the defense of Texas’ draconian abortion ban. The Alliance for Defending Freedom, a well-known hate group that wages anti-abortion legal battles, argued on behalf of the Leo-tied American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, alongside the state of Texas, to prevent the Biden Administration from enforcing the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires Medicare-funded hospitals to provide abortion care to stabilize a patient. 

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Powerful right-wing extremists funded a decades-long effort to capture the courts and overturn Roe v. Wade. Now they’re orchestrating the effort to ensure that decision inflicts maximum pain. If attorneys wore sponsorship decals like NASCAR drivers, the lawyers, the appellate court, and the Supreme Court Justices in this case would all be sporting the same logos. But the stakes in the race to inflict their unpopular views on the country are life and death. Make no mistake: the right-wing’s relentless assault on reproductive freedom has already killed women, and more will die because of this cowardly decision by the Supreme Court.”

Caroline Ciccone, President of Accountable.US

While the Alliance Defending Freedom and their right-wing allies on the Court are dismantling reproductive rights around the country, new data has shown a frightening wave of tragedies involving women and children living under abortion bans. In Texas, the number of women who died while pregnant, during labor, or soon after childbirth significantly increased following the implementation of the state’s ban on abortion. NBC News reported that “from 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same period.” Further, researchers at Johns Hopkins released an analysis that suggests the 2021 Texas abortion ban resulted in an increase in infant deaths in the year after the ban took effect.

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