A Texas law that effectively bans abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy went into effect on September 1. The law signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, known as SB8, bans abortion before many people know they are pregnant. It took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court, flush with three Trump appointees, refused to grant an emergency request to block it. 

SB8 has a novel provision that essentially deputizes ordinary citizens to enforce the law and claim a $10,000 bounty on anyone that they think has violated it. The Texas abortion ban is now expected to be replicated in many other Republican-led states.

“It is an all-out attack on the people who need abortions by intimidating and terrifying every person around them who might help them,” asserts Lynn Paltrow, the founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a human rights and civil rights organization focused on pregnant and parenting women.

Paltrow, who is an attorney, tells The Vermont Conversation that the Texas law is “about much bigger issues: white supremacy and male supremacy. It isn’t just criminalizing abortion. It is labeling and surveilling everybody who has the capacity for pregnancy.”

The anti-abortion law took effect the same week that Gov. Abbott signed laws restricting voter access and loosened gun restrictions. Paltrow says all these laws are part of a “strategy of undermining democracy and undermining constitutional review by the Supreme Court.”

Stopping the Texas law is a critical test, she says. “It’s not only a fight for abortion rights. It’s a fight for a true democracy.”