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Texas on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to turn away a Biden administration effort to halt enforcement of the state's six-week abortion ban but broached the possibility that justices could also opt to use the matter to more broadly consider decades-old precedents affirming abortion rights. A pair of filings from the state marked the latest salvo over the state's law after the Justice Department this week asked the Supreme Court to take emergency action that would block Texas’ novel abortion ban from being enforced while litigation over its constitutionality goes forward. (Ollstein, 10/21)

Texas on Thursday responded to the Justice Department’s emergency request for the U.S. Supreme Court to block the state’s six-week abortion ban while federal courts sort out its constitutionality, saying the federal government should butt out. The state’s argument essentially is that the Justice Department has no authority to sue Texas over its abortion law, known as Senate Bill 8, because it’s enforced by private citizens rather than public officials. (Caldwell and O'Hanlon, 20/21)

The Supreme Court should reconsider decades-old precedent protecting abortion rights if it decides to take up a legal challenge to a Texas law that starkly curtails the procedure, Texas officials argued Thursday in briefs to the high court. The arguments were filed in response to separate petitions challenging the restrictive Texas law, which bans most abortions after as early as the sixth week of gestation, a time when many women are not yet aware they are pregnant. (Breuninger, 10/21)

Less than 48 hours after Texas’s abortion law went into effect, banning almost all abortions, West Virginia state delegate Josh Holstein was reminded of the promise that got him elected in 2020. Holstein ran as a “100 percent pro-life” Republican alternative to the two-term Democratic incumbent. He would pursue a “heartbeat bill” that would ban abortion once cardiac activity is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy. On Sept. 2, the day after Texas became the first state to successfully implement a six-week ban without court interference, a West Virginia resident called Holstein and other state delegates to task in a private post on his Facebook page. He wanted to know: Can we do the same thing in West Virginia? (Kitchener, 10/19)

Amid national furor over abortion access, a new survey found most women were satisfied with obtaining an abortion pill from a mail-order pharmacy, leading the researchers to argue that a regulatory program restricting such access is unnecessary. Specifically, 97% of 227 women surveyed had a complete abortion by using only the medication, which is generally known as mifepristone. Notably, 95% reported being very or somewhat satisfied with receiving the pill by mail and most participants received the medication by mail within three days, according to the survey published in Contraception, a medical journal. (Silverman, 10/21)