Private citizens in Texas will soon be able to sue anyone who distributes, prescribes or mails abortion-inducing drugs for at least $100,000, under a law Gov. Greg Abbott signed Sept. 17.
Texas House Bill 7, which will go into effect Dec. 4, aims to close loopholes that allowed Texas residents to still get abortions despite previous state restrictions. The bill targets medication abortions, which remain common in the state.
Before 2021, abortion restrictions mainly targeted physicians, law professor Elizabeth Sepper said. That changed with the 2021 “Heartbeat Act,” which prohibited abortions after six weeks and let citizens sue anyone breaking the law for at least $10,000. In 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that ruled women have a constitutional right to get an abortion, several restrictions went into effect. This new law builds on the “bounty hunter” model of the “Heartbeat Act,” Sepper said.
“Usually, to file a lawsuit, you have to have suffered some sort of injury, whether to your property or your body,” Sepper said. “Instead, this law gives any citizen the right to sue and recover $100,000 if they can show that someone violated HB 7.”
The new law targets anyone who prescribes, manufactures, distributes, mails or transports abortion pills within Texas or into the state from elsewhere, according to the legislation. There are no direct punishments for people who receive abortions; however, third-year law student Archana Murthy said she worries this could threaten students’ data privacy.
“If you are in a difficult position and (considering) an abortion … you have to be careful,” Murthy said. “You have to judge who is really on your side … Just (be) really careful about what you search up and where, (and be) mindful of your own privacy and who you tell things to.”
Murthy was last year’s reproductive justice scholar for the University’s Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, where she worked on reproductive and criminal justice issues around campus. She thinks students are discouraged after years of protesting abortion laws that have only grown more restrictive.
“People are so bogged down by everything that’s happening that there’s no energy to express,” Murthy said. “(Students) have seen that their activism at their legislature, their school, is not really recognized, or nothing really comes out of it.”
Medical Students for Choice, a student organization advocating for reproductive health, is one of many organizations that stayed dedicated to filling educational gaps created by these bans.
“(Medical students in Texas) don’t really receive very much formal education about medication abortion, surgical abortions, things like that … because of legal restrictions,” Gabrielle Le, last year’s president, said. “So we’ll do hands-on workshops to teach our students those skills.”
Murthy said the best thing students can do now is to stay informed on global issues.
“There will come a time when the young people of today, and people that are college students today, have the power to make substantive (policy) changes in the world,” Murthy said. “Having a really well-developed worldview is important to that. This isn’t the time to sit back and just succumb to what’s happening because someday people will get an opportunity, and then it’s up to them.”
