这最高法院发布未签署的命令在面临法律挑战的情况下，拒绝阻止德克萨斯州的堕胎禁令震惊了许多人，标志着美国生育权历史上的一个重要时刻。
反堕胎立法者多年来的策略是通过以下机制慢慢削减堕胎权“对堕胎提供者的定向限制”或“TRAP”法律，而彻底的生存前禁令被视为不现实。
“这真的很糟糕，真的出乎意料，”西阿拉巴马州妇女中心运营总监、《后罗伊时代美国新手册》的作者罗宾·马蒂告诉美国广播公司新闻。“我们认为它会更慢，不会像‘好了，我们完成了，权利没了’那样。”"
德克萨斯州法律禁止医生“在医生检测到胎儿心跳的情况下”提供堕胎服务，包括胚胎心脏活动，这种活动最早可能发生在怀孕六周。周三之前，没有有效的法律禁止在怀孕20周之前堕胎。许多州曾试图颁布早孕禁令，但都被法院阻止。
那是因为有明确的先例。1973年，最高法院在罗伊诉韦德案中宣布堕胎是一项受保护的权利。二十年后，在1992年的计划生育诉凯西案，最高法院重申“受宪法保护的妇女在胎儿获得生存能力之前决定堕胎并在不受国家干预的情况下获得堕胎的自由。”
“生存能力”意味着胎儿可以在子宫外存活，这通常发生在24至28周左右。因此，在此阶段之前完全禁止堕胎的法律已经被法院系统地推翻了。
“每次各州通过这些法案，联邦法院都会普遍阻止它们，”德克萨斯州案件的首席律师、生殖权利中心的高级律师马克·赫伦告诉美国广播公司新闻。“这是联邦法院首次允许为期六周的禁令生效。”
例如，佐治亚州为期六周的禁令去年被击倒。
“禁止‘心跳’甚至还没有达到可行性。所以这没有任何关系，甚至是试图在宪法的范围内。罗格斯法学院的联合院长兼法学教授金伯利·穆奇森在接受美国广播公司新闻采访时谈到了得克萨斯州的法律。
在《佐治亚州法》被否决之前，在法院审理挑战期间，该法被阻止生效。这就是这些案件通常的情况，也是生殖权利中心向最高法院提出的要求。
赫伦说:“当一项法律将造成严重损害时，联邦法院应该做的事情是保持现状，而如果有困难的问题，你可以就这些困难的问题提起诉讼。
这是首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨在自己的异议中呼吁的，他写道:“在法律生效之前，我会给予初步救济，以保持原状，这样法院就可以考虑一个州是否可以以这种方式逃避对其法律的责任。”
得克萨斯州的法律与以前的禁令不同，它禁止该州执行禁令，而是授权公民个人对任何“帮助或教唆”堕胎的人提起民事诉讼。
穆特谢森说，“他们制造了这种混乱，最高法院可以用这个钩子来说，‘我们不会停止法律，我们会让它生效，然后我们会看到会发生什么。’"
马蒂认为，将会发生的一件事是，“人们将不得不自己决定这是否是一条需要遵守的公正法律，以及他们愿意冒什么样的风险来从本质上推翻它。”
现在不同的还有自唐纳德·特朗普总统任命以来最高法院的组成鲁斯·巴德·金斯伯格法官去世。对穆特谢森来说，这是“最高法院出来的原始政治”的迹象，许多人认为这是立法者多年来越大胆的州法律提案的结果，这些提案得到了新的保守多数派和一个联邦上诉法官名单由特朗普任命。
值得注意的是，最高法院的命令指出，它“不是基于任何关于德克萨斯州法律合宪性的结论。“相反，不发布禁令的命令是基于技术原因，对法律的法律质疑仍在进行。
“法律仍然认为这些禁令是违宪的。不幸的是，最高法院还是让一项生效了，”赫伦说。
这一命令也丝毫没有推翻Roe。
“我们现在的立场是，根据罗伊和凯西的先例，得克萨斯州有一项完全违宪的法律，但该法律尚未被任何法院禁止或正式宣布违宪，”穆奇森说，并补充说，“堕胎权继续存在，并继续受到罗伊和凯西的保护。”
与此同时，穆奇森说将要受苦的女人是有色人种的女性，贫穷的女性，年轻的女性，没有证件的女性——这些才是这些法律真正打击的对象。"
How unprecedented the Texas abortion law is in scope of history
TheSupreme Court issuing an unsigned orderrefusing to block a Texas abortion ban while it faces a legal challenge stunned many and marked a significant moment in the United States' history of reproductive rights.
The playbook for years by anti-abortion legislators was to slowly chip away at the right to an abortion via mechanisms like"targeted restrictions on abortion providers" or "TRAP"laws, while outright pre-viability bans were seen as unrealistic.
"This was really bad and really unexpected," Robin Marty, operations director at the West Alabama Women's Center and author of "New Handbook for a Post-Roe America," told ABC News. "We thought it would be slower and not nearly as, 'all right, we're done, rights are gone.'"
The Texas law bans physicians from providing abortions "if the physician detects a fetal heartbeat," including embryonic cardiac activity, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Before Wednesday,no law was in effectthat banned abortions earlier than 20 weeks of pregnancy. Many states had tried to enact early gestational bans, but they had all been blocked by courts.
That's because of clear precedent. In 1973, the Supreme Court declared abortion a protected right in Roe v. Wade. Twenty years later, in1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court reaffirmed "the constitutionally protected liberty of the woman to decide to have an abortion before the fetus attains viability and to obtain it without undo interference from the State."
"Viability" means a fetus can survive outside of a uterus, and that typically happens around 24 to 28 weeks. So laws that outright ban abortion before that stage have been systematically knocked down by courts.
"Every time the states have passed them, the federal courts universally blocked them," Marc Hearron, lead attorney on the Texas case and senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told ABC News. "This is the first time that a federal court has allowed a six-week ban to take effect."
A six-week ban in Georgia, for instance, wasstruck down last year.
"A 'heartbeat' ban isn't even close to viability. So there's nothing about that that was even an attempt to be within the confines of the Constitution. That standing alone would make it unconstitutional," Kimberly Mutcherson, co-dean and law professor at Rutgers Law School, told ABC News about the Texas law.
Before the Georgia law was struck down, it was blocked from going into effect while courts heard the challenge. That is how these cases usually go and was what the Center for Reproductive Rights was asking for from the Supreme Court.
"The thing that the federal court should do when a law is going to pose grave harm is preserve the status quo while if there are difficult issues, you can litigate those difficult issues," Hearron said.
This was something Chief Justice John Roberts called for in his own dissent, writing: "I would grant preliminary relief to preserve the status quo ante — before the law went into effect — so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner."
The Texas law is different from previous bans in that it prohibits the state from enforcing the ban, instead authorizing private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who "aids or abets" an abortion.
With that, Mutcherson said, "they created this sort of confusion and this hook that the Supreme Court was able to use in order to say, 'We're not going to stay the law, we're going to allow it to go into effect, and then we'll see what happens.'"
Marty believes one thing that will happen is "people are going to have to decide for themselves whether this is a just law that needs to be followed or not, and what sort of risks they're willing to take in order to essentially bring it down."
What's also different now is the makeup of the Supreme Court since President Donald Trump's appointments and thedeath of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. To Mutcherson, this was a sign of "raw politics coming out of the Supreme Court," and many saw this as the result of years of increasingly bold state laws being proposed by lawmakers emboldened by the new conservative majority and aslate of federal appellate judgesappointed by Trump.
It is important to note that the Supreme Court's order stated it "is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas' law." Rather, the order not to issue an injunction was on technical grounds, and the legal challenge against the law is ongoing.
"The law remains that these bans are unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court let one take effect anyway," Hearron said.
This order also in no way overturned Roe.
"Where we stand right now is that Texas has a law on the books that is completely unconstitutional under the precedent of Roe and Casey, but that law has not yet been enjoined or officially declared unconstitutional by any court," Mutcherson said, adding, "The right to abortion continues to exist and continues to be protected by Roe and by Casey."
And in the meantime, Mutcherson said, "The women who are going to sufferare women of color, poor women, young women, women who are undocumented -- those are the folks that these kinds of laws really strike at."
