Tarrant County DA says she will prosecute any legitimate Texas abortion law violations
Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Sharen Wilson will enforce any Texas laws on abortion following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to a statement posted on the DA’s Twitter account.
On Friday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court repealed the constitutional right to abortion when it overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade case — handing control to individual states.
“My oath and that of everyone in my office is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States and Texas,” Wilson wrote in her statement. “Prosecutors do not make the law — we follow it. We followed Roe v. Wade when it was the law and we will follow Texas state law now.”
She wrote that her office will evaluate any case that is given to it and, if warranted, take the case to a grand jury for indictment.
“As prosecutors, we always know that our primary duty under law is not to convict, but to see that justice is done,” Wilson wrote.
Bans Off Our Bodies, an abortion rights group, is planning a protest at noon Saturday in downtown Fort Worth in response to the Supreme Court decision released Friday that overturned Roe V. Wade.
In Dallas County, District Attorney John Creuzot said he will not “stand in the way of [women] seeking the health care they need.”
“Bans on abortion disproportionately impact the poor, women of color and other vulnerable populations and endanger public safety,” Creuzot wrote in a statement. “As we do every day, my office will continue to use discretion to pursue justice on behalf of all citizens of our Dallas County community.”
Are abortions legal in Texas?
It’s unclear if abortions are legal in Texas today because of some pre-existing laws.
First is the decades-old law Texas had before Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Because that abortion ban is still technically on the books, it’s possible that Texas leaders could argue that abortion is now immediately illegal in the state.
“Experts disagree as to whether [pre-Roe bans] would come back into effect” now that Roe has been overturned, said Laura Dixon, spokesperson for the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an advisory Friday, saying “some prosecutors may choose to immediately pursue criminal prosecutions” against people who violate Texas’ pre-Roe abortion law.
But legal expert Elizabeth Sepper said it’s less clear that prosecutors could bring criminal charges under the old law.
“Probably the best argument is that the law is not valid” following a 2004 5th Circuit ruling that determined Texas’ pre-Roe statute had been repealed by implication, said Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Jeffery Hons, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Texas, said the organization’s lawyers were reviewing the pre-Roe ban to determine its effect. In the meantime, all Planned Parenthood abortion clinics in the state stopped providing abortions.
The trigger law in Texas, set to go into effect 30 days after the Supreme Court judgment is official, would prosecute abortion providers in Texas and not women seeking abortions.
Paxton said Friday that the Supreme Court must issue a judgment, separate from the opinion it released Friday, for Texas’ trigger law to take effect. That judgment could come a month or longer after Friday’s opinion.
Paxton said the trigger law will take effect, but the exact effective date is unknown. Once the trigger law does go into effect, likely later this summer, almost all abortions in the state will be illegal.