Justice department sues Texas over abortion law

The Biden administration has sued Texas over the state’s near total ban on abortion, calling the law “clearly unconstitutional”. The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said the law that went into effect earlier this month after the supreme court refused to block it and bans almost all abortions in the state was one “all Americans should fear”.

Senate bill 8, pushed through by Texas’s Republican-dominated legislature, bans abortion once embryonic cardiac activity is detected, which is around six weeks – a point at which most women are unaware that they are pregnant. The justice department argues that the law, which offers no exceptions for rape or incest, “illegally interferes with federal interests”.