U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel’s ruling followed a temporary injunction issued in August preventing Texas from outlawing the procedure known as dilation and evacuation, often referred to as “D&E.” That injunction came on the day before the ban was to have gone into effect.
The Texas law, known as Senate Bill 8 and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year, was challenged in a lawsuit brought by abortion providers. They argued that the ban would require women seeking to terminate their pregnancies to undergo additional “unnecessary, invasive, and potentially painful medical procedures, in order to access their constitutional right to an abortion,” before beginning a D&E procedure.
“The court is unaware of any other medical context that requires a doctor — in contravention of the doctor’s medical judgment and the best interest of the patient — to conduct a medical procedure that delivers no benefit to the woman,” Judge Yeakel wrote.
The judge’s ruling comes on the day his temporary injunction was to have expired.
Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, immediately filed a notice to appeal the ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“During a five-day trial this month in district court, we created a record unlike any other in exposing the horrors of dismemberment abortions. No just society should tolerate the tearing of living human beings to pieces,” Paxton said in a written statement.