“A lawsuit that could test the constitutionality of the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban was filed in Texas Monday against a doctor who admitted to performing an abortion considered illegal under the new law. The details of the civil suit against Alan Braid, a physician in San Antonio, are as unusual as the law itself, which empowers private citizens to enforce the ban on abortion once cardiac activity has been detected – often as early as six weeks into pregnancy. Braid stepped forward last week to say that he provided an abortion to a woman who was in the early stages of pregnancy, but beyond the state’s limit. Despite the risks, Braid said he acted because of his duty as a doctor and ‘because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.'”

‘I fully understood that there could be legal consequences – but I wanted to make sure that Texas didn’t get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested,’ he wrote in a column in The Washington Post. On Monday, an Arkansas man said he decided to file a lawsuit to test the constitutionality of the Texas measure after reading a news report about Braid’s declaration. Oscar Stilley, a former lawyer convicted of tax fraud in 2010, said he is not personally opposed to abortion, but believes that the measure should be subject to judicial review. ‘If the law is no good, why should we have to go through a long, drawn-out process to find out if it’s garbage?’ Stilley said in an interview after filing the complaint in state court in Bexar County, Tex., which includes San Antonio” – Washington Post.