Lawsuit challenges Texas law banning abortion after 6 weeks

A coalition of abortion providers and advocates filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging a Texas law that would allow private citizens to sue anyone for helping a woman get an abortion.

In addition to asking the U.S. district court in Austin to overturn the law, the plaintiffs asked for an injunction that would stop it from taking effect in September.

The law would ban abortion in the nation's second-biggest state after six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women even know they are pregnant, and ask private citizens to enforce the ban by suing doctors or anyone who helps a woman get an abortion. Among other situations, that would include anyone who drives a woman to a clinic to get an abortion. Under the law, anyone who successfully sues another person would be entitled to at least $10,000.

The plaintiffs include clergy, physicians and clinics. They are represented by Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights, among others, who say the law could saddle abortion providers with lawsuits that consume their time and resources and ultimately force them to shut down.

Texas “has put a bounty on the head of anyone who so much as gives a patient money for an abortion after six weeks,” Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.

Opponents of the law also say its enforcement scheme makes it particularly difficult to challenge in court. In other states, six-week abortion bans are enforced by government officials, allowing plaintiffs to sue state officials responsible for enforcing the law.

Defendants in the lawsuit include every state court trial judge and county clerk in Texas, the Texas Medical Board, the Texas Board of Nursing, the Texas Board of Pharmacy, the state attorney general, and the director of Right to Life East Texas, Mark Lee Dickson, who has...