Americans are rightly outraged at the hastily passed Texas abortion law–and equally so at the Supreme Court for not immediately striking it down–not just because it severely restricts a woman’s ability to get a legal abortion, but because it also deputises the entire worldwide population to profit with impunity by making accusations against others.

The Texas GOP, once again, didn’t think through the impact this law might have on other Constitutional rights, which puts them into a very precarious situation politically and legally.  The Texas law, SB 8, creates a Stalin-esque for-profit vigilante system:  people at any corner of the globe can accuse a Texas citizen of assisting a woman to get an abortion in hopes of getting a $10,000 (or greater) payment from that person.  SB 8 prevents the accused from seeking damages from the accuser if the accused is cleared in a civil court, and if the accused is found liable, s/he must pay the legal fees of the accuser.

Making an accusation, therefore, is a no-lose situation for billions of people.  The entire nation of Haiti could make individual claims that Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott illegally funded transportation to abortion clinics for women because he signed an transportation bill in, say, 2018 that provided state dollars to the Houston metropolitan transportation system, which funded a bus line that traveled by a women’s health clinic.  If a single woman took a bus to that clinic to terminate a pregnancy, Abbott is legally liable under this law, and would be forced to first defend himself against the charge and then pay each individual claim against him out-of-pocket.  That means the 11 million people of Haiti could enjoy a $110 billion windfall thanks to Abbott. 

That is, if the law stands up to scrutiny, and even the most superficial review of this law shows its unlikely to survive challenges in state court, let alone federal courts.  Despite conservative crowing that Wednesday’s Supreme Court notice “upheld” the law, it did no such thing.  In the 5-4 decision, SCOTUS (wrongly, in my view) didn’t block the enforcement of the law; it didn’t review its legality.  That will come later, and soon conservatives will say it couldn’t happen soon enough.

First, imagine if this law is adapted to impact another Constitutional right:  possession of a gun.  States require anyone who intends to carry a concealed weapon to assert that they will not do that if they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs.  In some states, a concealed-carry permit seeker must certify that they do not have drug or alcohol dependency.

Now let’s say a state like California passes a law that anyone can accuse someone of carrying a weapon while under the influence of alcohol or drugs–or when they have an alcohol or drug dependency–and the accused must pay that person $10,000 and all legal fees.  The accuser gets to walk away scot-free if the claim is dismissed, but the accused–and any person who allowed the accused to carry the gun–is individually on the hook for the $10,000 civil penalty.

(This scenario, believe it or not, is more legally tenable than the Texas abortion law:  another person is conceivably physically at risk by a person–drunk or not–carrying a gun, and therefore has–granted, very tenuous–standing as someone who may be harmed by the action.  It’s highly unlikely that an unconnected third party will be harmed by a woman having an abortion.)

Now, all people have to do is make one of two claims:  (1) they know the accused has, at some time, handled a gun while drinking or using drugs (including prescription drugs), or (2) they claim the person has a dependency on drugs (prescription or not) or alcohol and should never handle a gun.  The accused has to prove that these situations did NOT happen; the accuser doesn’t have to prove they did.  And the accuser has no liability if they didn’t.  The burden of proof is on the defendant.

Heck, just scroll through YouTube and find all the videos of drunken yahoos firing off weapons.  In a week, you could have $10 million in lawsuits in the pipeline.  And from there, you sue the gun seller, the family of the gun owner, the manufacturer, and even the bar that allowed the person to carry a weapon into it.  Cha-CHING!!!

That’s what the Texas law does:  it makes a for-profit industry of spurious, baseless accusations for someone exercising a Constitutional right without the need for actual criminal activity to be proven.  I doubt conservatives want such laws in place.

The second miscalculation the GOP must now contend with is the mobilization of women to the polls.  Let’s face it:  SB 8 is only superficially about abortion.  In reality, it’s about controlling women.  It’s about men demanding that women have their children, regardless of the circumstance in which that child is conceived.

And the GOP has just given fodder to every Democrat around the country campaigning for a state legislative seat.  The two questions that will be asked of every GOP candidate for a legislative seat:  “Do you support the Texas law?” and “Will you support a law that explicit blocks the drafting of such legislation in our state?”  The first undermines national support for such a law; the second implicitly shows support for Roe and a woman’s right to privacy relating to medical care.

With Texas teetering on a transition from a “red state” to a reliably “purple state” in the next decade, the state GOP did a stellar job of pushing up the timeline for that to happen.  Women’s rights proponents–of all genders–will be energized to hit the polls in the upcoming election.

And by turning a blind eye to the inherent idiocy of this law, the five members of the Supreme Court who let this law slide for now will carry that energy over to national races for a generation to come.  It will become the GOP’s Alamo:  not a heroic stand for freedom, but a futile, fatal blow caused by a bunch of white men who didn’t know when to back down.