Texas judge says abortions can resume, but future uncertain

WASHINGTON (AP) — Abortions in Texas can resume under a federal judge’s ruling this week, but for how long? A conservative federal appeals court, and ultimately the Supreme Court, might take a more skeptical look at the Biden administration’s lawsuit over Texas’ six-week abortion ban.

The state law prohibiting abortions once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks, had been in effect for more than a month. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman temporarily blocked it late Wednesday in a 113-page ruling that found the law violates a woman's right to an abortion.

But the legal fight over the law at this point isn't focused on abortion rights, but rather on who has the ability to mount a legal challenge to it and what a court can do.

Both the Supreme Court and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously rejected pleas from abortion providers to keep the law from taking effect until courts could definitively rule on its constitutionality. It's not clear how they will rule in the new case or when they might be expected to weigh in.

Texas already has said it will appeal to the 5th Circuit and the loser there almost certainly will ask the high court to intervene. The justices are separately hearing a major challenge to abortion rights in a case from Mississippi that could dramatically curtail a woman's right to an abortion in roughly half the states. But that case, being argued in December, won't be decided until next spring.

In the meantime, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court's two most significant abortion rulings, remain in effect.

The administration said it was suing Texas because its law is clearly unconstitutional under those rulings. What's more, the administration argued, Texas lawmakers wrote it in a way to evade early federal...