Policing Abortion in the United States

A new law came into effect in the state of Texas on 1 September 2021, which criminalised abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. This is an addition to the recent cascade of state legislation – at least 90 laws in the first six months of 2021 – designed to undermine the 1973 landmark Roe v Wade decision by the US Supreme Court, which had made abortion more accessible. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her entreaty to overturn the act, described how the ‘Texas legislature has deputised the state’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbours’ medical procedures’. The law promises a financial reward of up to $10,000 (approximately £7,200) to anyone who aids the successful prosecution of someone for defying the so-called ‘Texas Heartbeat Act’. Potential targets could include: a pregnant person; an abortion provider; insurance companies; and, it has been suggested, taxi drivers who transport these patients. In Justice Sotomayor’s words, the act ‘takes the extraordinary step of enlisting private citizens to do what the state could not’.