The US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Governor Abbott’s COVID-19 related abortion ban is enforceable by the state in a pandemic, nullifying District Judge Lee Yeakel’s temporarily blocked enforcement of the ban and temporary restraining order March 30.
The decision follows Abbott’s executive order, issued March 22, to halt all necessary medical or surgical procedures. The office of the Attorney General of Texas sent a press release on March 23 to all licensed health care professionals and all licensed health care facilities, including abortion providers, that, pursuant to Executive Order GA 09 issued by Abbott, they must postpone all surgeries and procedures that are not immediately medically necessary.
According to the case documents from The United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division, plaintiffs argue that they were entitled to a temporary restraining order following the attorney general’s press release.
“Plaintiffs interpret the press release as “suggesting that [the attorney general] believes continuing to provide any abortion care (other than for an immediate medical emergency) would violate the Executive Order, and as a warning to abortion providers that ‘[t]hose who violate the [Executive O]rder will be met with the full force of the law, the case document reads.”
Yeakel granted the temporary restraining order to Planned Parenthood which set to expire on April 13 at 2 p.m. The order, however, is nullified by the Fifth Circuit Court who argue that the order “compromises the State’s efforts to protect public health in the name of advancing a theory of the right to abortion that the Supreme Court has never endorsed.”
Petitioners Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, Phil Wilson, Stephen Brint Carlton, and Katherine A. Thomas sought mandamus relief, an order from a court to any government to do some specific act which that body is obliged under law to do, essentially nullifying the order passed by Yeakel March 30.