Last night, the Supreme Court quietly green-lit the most extreme abortion ban the United States has seen in half a century: a Texas law that prohibits abortions at six weeks from a woman’s last period, even in cases of rape or incest, and that deputizes citizens to spy on women and sue anyone who helps someone obtain a prohibited abortion.
The rest of the states now have a road map to ban abortion almost entirely and put bounties on women and doctors without court intervention. The constitutional right to abortion until viability is no longer being enforced. Republicans have been looking forward to this moment for decades. But some have mysteriously gone quiet. Even the loudest of the anti-abortion senators, Ted Cruz, who happens to hail from Texas, had managed, as of this writing, to refrain from gloating about the victory on Twitter.